For those of you reading this due to your familiarity with my previous work, Multiverse, I have to warn you, this is CONSIDERABLY darker than that story ever even thought about being.
As always, I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.
"You know what I think, Bella?" I looked away before Dr. Johnson's eyes could meet mine. A hint of sadness flickered across her face, only to be quickly replaced by her ever-present professionalism. "I think, with all you went through, it only makes sense that you created this world for yourself."
Through my tears, I couldn't help nodding in agreement. I bunched up the tissue in my right hand and added it to the growing mountain in my left, trying to crunch the huge ball tighter. There were limits, though, on how far one could compact a tissue, however moist with fresh sobs it may be. Dr. Johnson kindly picked up the trash can next to her seat and held it out for me.
"Th-thank you," I managed, grasping maniacally for another tissue from the box in front of me. She may have been the only person who'd ever shown me true kindness, which was just slightly pathetic, given that she was just doing her job. She let me go on blubbering for another minute or so, and when I finished blowing my nose, she continued.
"It's fairly common for a young woman to fantasize about being with a dangerous man. She tends to want to believe that she alone is immune to his violence and rage, that she can tame him, make him into something more palatable. Were you immune to his violence and rage, Bella?"
I couldn't bring myself to look back at her again. Instead, I focused all of my attention onto the tissue in my hand. I was shredding it into intricate pattens. It was fascinating, but very difficult, because the damp spots tended to change the shape, turning the neat, straight lines I was tearing into a mangled mess.
"Bella?" Dr. Johnson repeated.
"No," I whispered, finding my voice. "No, I wasn't."
"Tell me about the first time Edward hurt you," she said patiently.
"He wasn't trying to hurt me," I protested. "He pushed me into that table to save me from—"
"That wasn't the first time, Bella," she cut me off, paging through her notes. "What about your visit to the hospital near the end of your junior year?"
"He didn't do that!" I cried out, my voice at last back at full strength. "That was James! James tricked me into going into my old ballet studio and nearly killed me. If it hadn't been for Edward, I—"
"Bella," Dr. Johnson said calmly, "I can't help you if you're going to continue trying to make excuses for him, especially such elaborate ones. You came to me because you wanted to get better. You do still want to get better, don't you?"
I swallowed, closing my eyes and trying hard not to remember.
"He took you to meet his family. That was when you discovered that one of his 'sisters' had been raped and beaten, and the other one conveniently lacked any memories from her childhood or early adolescence. His 'brothers' were both overly obsessed with fighting. You got scared. What did you do, Bella?"
"I—I went home," I told her, pressing back through the false memories I'd spent so many years constructing and trying to make myself believe. "I told him I didn't want to see him anymore, and I told my father I was leaving for Phoenix to stay with my mother. I didn't want to worry Char—Dad. I didn't want to tell him that I was scared of Edward. I just wanted to get as far away from him as I could."
"But Edward wasn't going to let you go without a fight, was he?"
I pressed my eyes together as tightly as I could, willing the tears to stay inside and not come pouring out as they always did when I remembered my past as it had truly happened, unfettered by these creations of my private universe. My body disobeyed me, as it so frequently did on these occasions. The moisture began to pool in the corners of my eyes, and before I knew it, wet streaks were following the trails down my cheeks, blazed by so many others before these.
There would be many more to come, I knew.
"He followed me," I reduced my voice to a whisper again, as if I were certain that he could hear me wherever he was, that he would come for me and it would begin all over again. "He took me to his hotel. He said he just wanted to talk, but..." Talking was far from what he'd done. My memory flashed back and forth between the false ones and the true ones. Had it been an ordinary-looking man who had knocked me around an abandoned dance studio, throwing me into the mirrors? Or had it been the gorgeous rich teenager with the surly attitude who had shoved me down two flights of stairs and into a plate glass window?
"I woke up in the hospital," I told Dr. Johnson, recounting the part of the tale that I could remember for certain. "He was so kind to me then, so sweet, so apologetic about what happened. He said it was his fault, but I still had to say that I tripped. He told me to say that his father had been there. His father wasn't there. I lied for him so many times..." My voice caught in my throat, and the salty taste of my own weeping touched the end of my tongue. It was a wonder Dr. Johnson had any tissues left at all. If all of her patients cried as endlessly as I did, she must have bought stock in a tissue company.
She waited patiently for me to regain my composure. "What happened after that, Bella?"
"He told me... He told me he'd never leave me."
"How did that make you feel?"
"Frightened, but also... It made me feel special. Happy. Complete. Honored that he'd chosen me, out of all of the other girls. He could have had any girl he wanted, but he'd picked me."
Dr. Johnson nodded and jotted down a quick note. She never spent much time writing during our sessions, a fact for which I was endlessly grateful. "After you left the hospital, did he remain apologetic?"
I nodded. "For quite awhile, yes. At least until after the cast came off."
"But he continued to make you do things you didn't want to do, even when he claimed to be repentant for what he'd done?" It wasn't exactly a question. We'd discussed the prom before.
"He did make me to go the prom," I acknowledged slowly, unsure that I understood the precise course this conversation was taking.
"You didn't want to go to the prom, yet you went. Why didn't you just tell him no?"
"He didn't—I didn't have a choice," I stammered. "He didn't tell me where I was going. He had his sister dress me up and he picked me up at my house and took me away. He never told me where he was taking me until we were on our way."
Dr. Johnson set down her notes on the small table beside her for a moment. "Tell me about going to the prom with Edward," she said quietly.
"I actually had another date for the prom," I began, remembering slowly. "He showed up at my house and Edward spoke to him. He told him... Well he basically told him that he wasn't allowed to try to make plans with me anymore, now that I think about it. Then when we arrived at the prom, Jacob showed up and he—he tried to warn me," I gasped, the pieces beginning to slowly fall together.
"Jacob was..." Dr. Johnson picked up her notes again and flipped through them, "the son of one of your father's closest friends. What did he know about Edward?"
"I—I'm not sure." I closed my eyes, trying to remember. "He called Edward and his family 'cold.' I'm sure of that."
"'Cold' can have a lot of meanings apart from temperature-related concerns. Think hard, what else do you remember Jacob telling you about the Cullens?"
"They weren't allowed to go to La Push," I remembered suddenly. It came back to me in a rush. I'd gone to the beach with some friends. I had invited Edward, but he'd refused to go. Once I was there, I met up with Jacob and a few of the other guys from the reservation. We were told that Edward's family wasn't welcome there, but no one gave any explanation as to why. I had taken a walk on the beach with Jacob to try to get some more information, but all he'd said was that the Cullens were cold. Cold. What did that mean?
"There had been some disappearances in the woods," I said slowly. "Vicious attacks. Everyone thought it was bears doing it." I sat bold upright with a start. "Emily. Leah Clearwater's cousin Emily, she was attacked by something. It was why Sam started spending all of his time with her, he felt sorry for her about what happened. She claimed it was a bear, but I don't think it was."
"Think hard, Bella. Push through the false memories. What do you think it was that attacked Emily?"
I knew, deep down, what must have attacked her, but I couldn't bring myself to speak the words aloud. Instead, I moved the subject of our conversation a few months down the line.
"He did eventually leave me alone," I informed her, once again trying to defend Edward in spite of everything.
Dr. Johnson smiled slightly and adjusted her glasses, settling further back in her chair. She never pressed me to tell her any parts of my story that I wasn't yet ready to tell. That was what I liked best about her, I think. She was so willing to sit patiently as the words spilled out of me at their own pace, disjointed and peppered by the lies I'd told everyone, including myself.
"After he shoved me into the table to save me," I told her defiantly. "He knew what he'd done was wrong, and he left."
"What was he saving you from, Bella?"
I struggled to remember. All I could imagine was his brother Jasper lunging at me, his eyes full of rage and bloodlust, but I couldn't remember why. I chewed on my lower lip as I often did when trying to piece these recollections together.
"It's not important right now," she said gently after waiting for what seemed like a lifetime. "What happened immediately after he pushed you into the table? Before he left?"
I lowered my gaze to my feet. I didn't want to admit to the details. Even I couldn't defend what had taken place, no matter how badly I wanted to. "His father stitched me up in the back room rather than taking me to the hospital, and they brought me home, where I lied to my father again about how I'd gotten injured." I spoke quickly, secretly hoping that the words would be more easily ignored if they came out rapid-fire.
"Did his father seem to have a lot of experience at covering up his sons' misdeeds?" Dr. Johnson asked, making notes once again.
"Yes," I confessed. "Edward told me that they'd had to leave move more than once because of rumors, but I never really dreamed the rumors might be true."
"So do you suppose that Edward really left because he was afraid of hurting you—"she began.
"—Or because he was afraid of hurting his reputation?" I finished. "I don't know," I was forced to admit. My lip quivered as the dam broke within my eyes, spilling forth the floods once more. Had he ever really cared about me at all?
"Now, we've talked before about your period of separation. You said you began to hear voices?"
"Once voice," I corrected. "Edward's. Always Edward's voice."
"But you heard his voice only under certain conditions. Tell me about that."
"When my life seemed to be in danger, I would hear him speaking to me, begging me to stop," I announced, feeling triumphant. He had cared for me. He'd warned me away from dangers such as strange men and motorcycling with Jacob.
"So being in imminent peril reminded you of your violent boyfriend? That's interesting," Dr. Johnson stabbed a dagger through a part of my theory, but the fact remained that he'd warned me away from these dangers, implored me verbally to step away from them. "I wonder," she continued on, "whether it was the peril that his voice was warning you from, or your proximity to other men. Men who might, one day, be able to help you to get over him."
My mouth flew open to protest. I never heard his voice when I spent hours alone with Jacob in his garage. But then, being in Jacob's garage hadn't reminded me of Edward. Being in danger had. I shut my mouth once more. I had nothing to say. He'd been in my head, even then, speaking in threatening tones if I dared do anything he might not like.
"He eventually returned, didn't he? Tell me about that."
"After I went cliff-diving, his sister came back because she had a vision and she thought I was jumping off the cliff to kill myself," I told her.
"Bella, we've been over this," Dr. Johnson scolded me, removing her glasses and giving me a stern look. I would describe the look as "motherly," except I'd never known Renee to look at me like that. "You need to tell me how it truly happened, not the fantasy you produced in your mind to conceal the fact."
I sighed and begged myself internally to remember the truth. I didn't want to. Above all else, this was the part I most desperately wished to forget. "I was trying to kill myself," I whispered. "Who goes cliff-diving by themselves?"
"And Jacob pulled you out of the water," she continued, though she knew that this part, at least, had been true. The fall had somehow failed to kill me, although subconsciously I must have known that would be the case. I had seen the boys in town jumping from the lower ledge for sport, but I'd taken it to an extreme, climbing to the higher point and jumping from there instead. Perhaps it had been a cry for help. Still, I had been all too willing to give up once the current had been too strong and had begun to pull me under. If Jacob hadn't seen me from the beach... I shuddered a little at the thought.
"Yes," I agreed. "It happened that Edward's sister had come to check on me. I think she was really just trying to get away from her family for a few days and was using me as an excuse. Edward called my house and pretended to be his father. He asked for Charlie. I don't know whether it was his goal to check on his sister and make sure she had really gone where she claimed to be going, or whether he had been trying to check on me. Jacob told him that Charlie was 'arranging the funeral,' so he immediately hung up and called Alice on her cell phone. Alice had left the room as soon as Jacob showed up. She wasn't comfortable around him. His father suspected too many truths about her family and their dirty secrets, why women went missing who entered the woods when the men in her family lived in Forks." I tried to stop myself from shuddering. I didn't want to continue talking. I didn't want to think about all the women who had met their end in Forks at the hands of the Cullen men.
"Go on," Dr. Johnson encouraged me.
"He was furious when Alice told him I'd been spending time with Jacob. He demanded that she kidnap me. She told me that Edward was in danger and needed my help. Jacob saw what was going on; he begged me to stay. He knew that I was being manipulated, but I didn't listen. I got into the car with her." I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, and still it wasn't enough to block out the light. I balled my hands into fists and clamped them over my eyes, trying to shut out everything in the world. I felt like screaming, but I wasn't sure I'd even be able to hear myself over the noise of the shambles my life had become.
I pulled myself together. "I don't remember much about what really happened," I admitted. "All I really know is that my dad told me that Edward brought me home a few days later, and I was literally falling asleep on my feet, but Edward seemed fine."
Dr. Johnson always seemed to be on the verge of showing me pity with her expression, but ever the consummate professional, she kept her features neutral, even in the face of evidence of torture like days of forced sleep-deprivation in parts unknown after being kidnapped.
"After that, the Cullens moved back to town and everything seemed to return to normal, except that I wasn't allowed to see Jacob anymore," I told her. "Any time I talked about wanting to see him, Edward wouldn't allow it. He'd have his sisters come and take me away, or he'd whisk me out of town for a weekend. Anything to keep me away from Jacob. One of his sisters," I choked on my words, remembering, "Rosalie... She told me that I shouldn't join their family. She told me that she'd never had a choice, but I did. I can't remember now everything that she told me, but she was just so certain about what she was saying."
"Did Edward cut you off from the rest of your support group?" Dr. Johnson seemed less interested in Rosalie's warning than in my separation from Jacob. It upset me. I didn't want to talk about Jacob. But I complied.
"Sort of," I admitted. "I really wasn't supposed to talk to any of the boys in school. The girls were all right, but he seemed to find something wrong with most of them. He monopolized as much of my time as he possibly could too, making it clear how upset he was when he wasn't able to spend every waking minute with me. He convinced the school to rearrange his class schedule so that we had all of the same classes, too, so he could keep an eye on me at all times. Even my mother noticed it, one of the few times she saw us together, how the way he watched me was creepy."
Dr. Johnson set her pen down atop the notes in her lap. "It's very common for abusers to try to cut their victims off from their support networks, you know. Did he try to control you in other ways? Force you to become financially dependent upon him?"
I nodded slowly. "Yes, when I got a part-time job, he wanted me to quit it. He said he'd pay for anything I needed, but I insisted. Even then, I'm fairly certain he was spying on me while I was at work, or sending his brothers to do it on his behalf. He filled out my college applications for me, paying off the schools with all his family's dirty money to make sure that the schools he approved of would accept me. I would have been indebted to him forever if I'd gone, since he would have been responsible for getting me and would have paid my way too," I broke down into sobs once more as tissue after tissue departed the box, swiped across my face, and was deposited into the trash can. I felt like a human assembly line, except that the product I was making was apparently snot-filled tissues.
"But there was a condition for him to pay for you to go to college, wasn't there?"
A shudder went through my body as I recalled what had taken place. "After I'd barely managed to save any money because Edward didn't like me taking too many shifts, and I'd spent most of my college fund on the motorcycles, I didn't have a lot of options. Edward said he'd pay for me to go to school if I'd marry him."
"And when you agreed, how did Jacob take the news?"
"He was furious, of course. He knew the truth about Edward, what I was too blind to see. He pulled me aside and talked to me about it. He'd already kissed me once, mostly to prove a point. I hadn't cared for his methods, but it was nothing compared with how Edward reacted. If my father hadn't been inside when the two of them confronted each other, I'm certain one of them would've killed the other. When Jacob pulled me aside to talk to me again, Edward... He snapped. A few minutes later, half of the bones in Jacob's body were broken, and of course the Cullens were doing everything they could to cover it up. Carlisle was making house calls to Jacob's house, pumping him full of morphine and setting the bones himself rather than letting the Blacks file a police report. I think they must have paid Jacob off, because he left town as soon as he was healed and I—I never saw him again."
"But you imagined that you did."
I nodded. That much, I could remember clearly. "Yes, I imagined my life being intertwined with Jacob. I imagined Jacob showing up on my wedding day and threatening Edward, because Jacob knew what was coming after the wedding. I imagined Jacob being there afterward, my knight in shining armor, offering to take me away even as I was, even after all that Edward had done to me, even broken and damaged goods as I'd become."
"What did come after the wedding?"
"It's so hard to talk about," I sobbed into yet another tissue, wishing for once that I could just talk about my life without breaking into hysterics. I longed for Dr. Johnson to just let me recall the happy memories I'd created instead. Once I could speak again, I did so clearly and in a monotone voice, staring at the patterns in the carpet instead of looking at Dr. Johnson.
"Edward took me to a remote island for our honeymoon. We left immediately after the wedding so that no one had a chance to intervene. He wouldn't tell anyone where we were going, so I had no chance of contacting anyone to rescue me. We were there for weeks. Every day he dragged me around to the point of exhaustion so that I wouldn't be able to put up any resistance at night, and every morning I woke up covered in bruises. One morning he wasn't there when I woke up, and I thought the nightmare might have been over, but he'd left a note. I had nowhere to go, since I didn't even know where I was, and I discovered that the only food in the room was rancid. I was a complete prisoner to his every whim until he decided to bring me back home."
"And after you came home?"
"I wasn't allowed to see my family. Carlisle told my father I had gotten sick on the island, but in reality I was too bruised, with too many broken bones, to be seen by anyone. I couldn't leave the house. It just continued. I kept getting broken ribs, eating only what others would bring me, no one would let me stay anywhere alone. The entire family participated in what happened to me. Toward the end, I wasn't even allowed to go to the bathroom by myself."
"How did you get away?"
"My poor body could only take so much," I whimpered, remembering the pain and the weakness. "Edward thought he'd killed me. Carlisle gave me morphine to keep the pain at a minimum while the family discussed what to do. I couldn't move for awhile, but then finally the morphine wore off and I was in so much agony. I was determined not to scream, not to let anyone know that I was awake. I opened my eyes and it was as if I was seeing things clearly for the first time. I jumped out a window, and I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could."
Dr. Johnson was leaning forward in her seat, impressed by my resilience in an impossible situation. "Yet you created this fantasy where Edward was a vampire, and he was not responsible for his actions. Why do you suppose you did that?"
"I think," I said slowly, carefully, fully meeting her gaze for the first time during this session. "I think from the moment he laid eyes on me, he decided that I was to be his. I was his prey. That was why he snuck into my room at night, demanding that I conceal his presence from my father. Why he picked me up in the morning so I didn't have a moment to myself. There is no part of me that believes he didn't know, from the moment he saw me, that he wanted me, and what that wanting was going to result in. I think some part of me wants to believe that maybe there was a more altruistic reason for him making that decision the moment he saw me."
"And what do you think, Bella? The larger part of you. Not the tiny part that persists in listening to the fantasy you created for yourself?"
I took a deep breath, for I knew that I was likely to be sent away to a facility once I told Dr. Johnson the truth of what I really thought. "About three things, I'm absolutely certain. One, Edward is an abuser. Two, there is a part of him, and I don't know how dominant that part might be, that wants to cause me pain. And three, in spite of everything, I am still unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."