Disclaimer: Not the S. Meyer you're looking for.
A/N: Spoilers for The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. AU. One way or another, Bree and Diego make it out alive at the end of Eclipse, hook up with Fred and embark on the shiny new life of a newborn vampire. Or not. This little ficlet will be in two or three parts.
I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire
~Sting, "Desert Rose"
We had been in Vancouver three months when Diego began to talk of going to the beach. He would run his fingers idly through my hair while describing sunsets and sailboats, stars as bright as jewels, far from the glare of city lights. He talked about sipping mango juice from coconut shells. I reminded him that it was fresh blood and not fresh mango we craved now.
When it was Fred's night to hunt, Diego and I crept onto the roof of the abandoned warehouse we called home and laid out our picnic blanket and whiled away the hours until sunrise with stories. Once in a blue moon, if I was lucky, I was able to beg or bully him into singing to me.
"I sang tenor," he told me. "In the a capella."
I raised an eyebrow. "Sounds fancy. We didn't have those where I came from."
"It means 'without accompaniment.' Just a bunch of guys singing - no piano, no orchestra."
"No girls?"
His teeth flashed, sharp and white in a tanned face. "They had their own group. To be honest, I wasn't sold on the idea at first. I have a decent voice, but the real reason I joined was so I could put down another extracurricular, for applying to …"
He trailed off. Since leaving Riley, our past lives were no longer a taboo subject. We spoke often in general terms about the kinds of TV shows we watched, the music we listened to. We assiduously avoided discussing the details of our families, our pets, our day-to-day existences. As far as I was concerned, I had been born in blood and fire on the day a pretty boy bought me a hamburger, and everything that came before was like a portrait in sepia – rendered in shades of charcoal or gray. My world came in only one color now, and that was red.
I gestured at the checkered cloth of the picnic blanket. "This is ridiculous."
"Our coming up here for a picnic?"
"Our pretending this is a picnic. The only kind of picnics we're invited to is the kind where we rip people's throats out, and it's no use pretending any different."
Diego's brow was furrowed, deep in thought. He didn't contradict me. Instead, he said, "Let's go to the beach, Bree."
My mouth fell open. "What, in broad daylight?"
"How are you going to sunbathe at night?"
"You're insane," I said.
"Bree, querida – "
"You have to stop doing this. You can't go back to that – can't go back to before."
"What are you talking about? I just want to go to the beach. You could pick out a bikini –"
"Listen to yourself, Diego! You no perfectly well what would happen if we went to the beach. Police. National Guard. Media circus. Little kids wanting to poke us with popsicle sticks. Not necessarily in that order."
"Jesus, Bree, calm down. I didn't mean a public beach." He reached for my hand and I pulled away.
I looked at him somberly. I said, "You never call me querida unless you want something from me."
The warehouse straddled the border between the industrial district and the shantytown, where migrant workers ghosted in and out. Maybe they were searching for gainful employment, and maybe they were searching for the next meal to sate their immediate hunger, as we were. The young people I saw on the streets pulled their hoods up like cowls. The three of us in our ragged clothing blended right in with the unsavory element of our chosen neighborhood.
We had chosen the warehouse because it was empty, and abandoned, and no one was likely to lay claim to it, considering the shape it was in. But as Diego pointed out, a big hole in the wall didn't present a problem for vampires. Vampires didn't get cold.
In fact, it was Diego who chose the warehouse. Fred and I just went along with him. It took me a long time to realize that he was consciously trying to distance us from Riley, from the way Riley did things. When Riley picked a new headquarters, we always had to evict the previous tenants first. Some of the others (I flinched as the image of Raoul flashed before my eyes) enjoyed that part more than they should have.
We could have gotten nicer clothes. That we chose to wear cast-offs from our old life and raid thrift stores rather than malls was just that, another choice, another incongruity to file away under the giant question mark of who we were, what we were. Sometimes – not often – I forgot that I wore a predator's body; that I was a hunter, not a weak, slow human grubbing in the soil. Other times the excruciating burn of bloodlust in the back of my throat wiped every other thought from my mind for hours, days. Those times, it helped to be near Diego. He made me feel more – not human, because we were not that, never that – but more myself. He made me feel like I'd come home.