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Maybe it was Fate
Bad things happen when promises aren't kept.
When Edward didn't come back things became rocky for me. Even with Jake there to help me I couldn't get back up and when I continued to refuse Jake's advances Jake wasn't as there for me as often as before.
Funny what people do when they lose hope.
Jake hadn't come over in a month and at the time going into the woods seemed like a good idea; somewhere quiet to sort out my thoughts. Maybe Jake was seeing something in us that I couldn't see.
All good plans go to waste, I guess.
Victoria found me in the woods. And she followed through on her plans- until she found that Edward was no longer with me. The only thing worse than killing your lover is to have them live forever without their own.
Even with her change in plans, she made sure the transition was as painful as possible. She bit my fingers and waited a day; it was the most intense pain ever, even more so than the bite to my wrist. The pain crept slowly up to my elbow before she made her next move.
She made tiny slices all over my torso before spitting in them. My muscles began to cramp, the pain was uneven and terrible. My legs and shoulders were numb from the blood flowing to the other places to fight off the poison Victoria introduced to my body.
Another day passed before she did anything else, but it wasn't until after that I knew what she did; I was in too much pain to be aware of anything except for the pain and the changing days.
Five days passed before the change was over and by then Victoria was gone. I had thought that maybe she would force me to join her coven and follow her ways but that wasn't the case.
Instead she had left me to fend for myself, with no one there to restrain me it was a fate far worse.
The hunger was mind consuming, it over powered the prior pain and the constant mental pain that I was this forever now and I was this without Edward.
I walked through the woods, waiting for a scent of something to hit me. Everything was multiplied; sight, sound, touch. It was amazing, my own personal spidey sense.
I came across two campers first, sweetly sharing their first time together in the secluded woods.
Their blood was sweet as I drank it; the man first and then the woman. Their blood was euphoric, almost an aphrodisiac. Too bad I had no one to use the aphrodisiac with.
I felt only slightly bad as I dumped the bodies in the nearby river, taking the young girls clean clothes to wear.
They weren't clothes I would ever wear, short black flippy skirt and a tight completely backless shirt. It was right though, to wear to something that wasn't me. Because I wasn't me any more, I couldn't be Bella Swan after this.
Weeks past like this, I slowly emerged into a Seattle as Cordelia Anne Nelluc, I slowly began preying on young, naive men. However hard I tried I couldn't stop drinking human blood, it was so sweet. The persons memories and feelings flowing into me as I drained them. I never took blood from someone who would be missed, though, I couldn't stand hurting multiple people.
I moved towns quickly, drained bodies are a rarity and when a newcomer moves in and drained bodies show up people get suspicious real fast. I never stayed in one town longer than a month, long enough to earn some money and buy some new clothes.
During the day, when I sat in whatever dank room I was renting, things were hard. The hours of daylight gave me time to remember how my life was and what I had become.
A lady of the night. In more ways than one.
But what else could I do? I had no one to fall back on, no one to support me in my endeavor to become good again.
Until I moved to New York City.
I was sleazing in some dark night club, when I saw him sitting at the bar. He had dark shadows under his eyes and he looked much thinner, I wasn't too sure how that was possible but I was certain he had lost weight. His hair was disheveled and his clothes were wrinkled. What would Alice have to say about that?
Was he even still living with his family?
Maybe things had changed, he was in this bar.
Love Bites was a hole in the wall bar, specifically designed for those who got off on being bitten by a vampire. Sure it was harder to eat this way; you had to be sure to suck all the venom out in the end if any got in and you had to be able to resist the need to finish the person off.
Everyone who entered the bar had to sign a contract and check in before they left, anyone unaccounted for would have there contract burned and if your evening meal didn't show up you would be burned too.
You would think that all the vampires would rebel, we were certainly strong enough too if we really wanted to, but no one wanted this convenience to be gone.
I had found a young man in the back, he appeared to be sulking.
"Hey," I said softly, "You wanna dance?" I touched his hand and pulled him with me to the dance floor. The music was loud and the beat pulsed through my body from the floor, I loved how I felt at this moment. Every night it was the same thing, lose myself in the music, lose myself in the blood and let the slow pulse bring me back.
It wasn't always about sex at Love Bites; that was another reason I loved being here. Every once and awhile if I was feeling lonely and met the right poor sucker sex would come before the biting. Sometimes they would offer money, and rent needed to be paid.
And technically, it wasn't sex. Just foreplay, I couldn't go any farther than that with a human and I wasn't sure I ever wanted to go past that. I only wanted to share that feeling with Edward. And that would never happen.
It wasn't the life I wanted to lead, but after twenty years I was forgetting what kind of life I had wanted to lead. Until the night I saw Edward.
I tried so hard to get my mind off the familiar stranger; I danced the hardest I ever had with the young man, Robert.
"You want to go find a room?" he asked me, his voice was low and husky. I could smell alcohol and some sort of drug in his breath, but his blood smelled wonderful. I could smell the fear and the excitement of the upcoming pleasures. I smiled a practiced smile and led him to the long stairway that held the numerous rooms for Love Bites patrons, "Let me get a drink first. You wore me out."
"Do the right things and I can wear you out again," another practiced line. He drew me over to the bar, I wasn't used to the human leading me around. He led me right next to the open seat next to Edward, I leaned down and let my hair fall in front of my face.
So much like that day in Biology.
Robert ordered his drink and sat down, waiting, I barely noticed his hands roaming my body as someone opened the nearby door.
It had been storming non-stop for two weeks and a gush of wind blew my hair around.
So much like that day in the woods, playing baseball.
Oh God, please don't let Edward smell me. I just came here to get a good meal. I didn't want to be haunted by the past- I had daytime for that.
"Bella?" his voice was the same and yet different as well. It seemed pained, weak. Dead.
No, no, I'm not Bella. I'm Cordelia Anne Nullec.
And yet I turned my head all the same. Even after twenty years I still have a hard time answering Cordelia, I guess I still answered to Bella. Old habits die hard.
"Oh, Bella, no," I looked into his dark black eyes; he hadn't hunted in awhile. Was he drinking from humans now? Had things changed that much?
Edward's hands brushed over my eyes, I closed them, I didn't want to see the disappointment in his own eyes. I knew my eyes were red, it hadn't taken me too long to figure out that if you drink from humans your eyes won't change to the shades of brown I had come to love on Edward.
"Cordelia, are you ready?" Robert whispered into my neck.
I turned away from Edward and looked back into Robert's green eyes, "No. I'm- I'm not thirsty anymore. Sorry."
I slipped out of his embrace, which would of kept most women there, but not me. I ran quickly out the door, praying that Edward wouldn't be able to follow me.
God doesn't listen to the soulless apparently.
"Isabella!" he had followed me all the way into my apartment.
I could have very easily yelled at him. I could have told him to leave me alone, to leave me here. That he was so wonderful at deserting people.
But I didn't.
"What happened?" I refused to answer. He followed me into the bedroom and I got out sweats from the pile of laundry and stared at him trying to tell him to get out of my room at least.
He refused.
Fine.
I turned around and began to undress, "Bella!" After so many years of giving my body away to humans it didn't mean much to me anymore, I would of never shown Edward this much skin when I was human, even if it was just my back. "Bella! What happened?"
I turned around, stripping off the straight leather skirt I had on. Why leather had come back into fashion was beyond me? But it got me food and money, so I wasn't going to complain. I stood in front of Edward my bra and underwear, feeling utterly ridiculous; I resisted the urge to hide myself.
"This happened, Edward!" I screamed out, pointing to the numerous scars that ran over my body. As a vampire, I would never scar, assuming someone was able to cut my skin and during the transformation all of my human scars had disappeared but all of the cuts and wounds used to transfer venom into my blood stream had scarred. And I was certain they would remain there.
"You left me Edward, you promised to stay with me and you didn't. You broke your promise, so I broke mine. I went into the woods and Victoria found me. She was going to kill me, but when she found out that you left me, that you didn't love me. She decided to kill me in another way. She made me into a vampire."
I sat down on my bed, letting my sweats fall to floor. I had never wanted all that to come out to Edward, I had never wanted to see him again. But things never work out as neatly as you might want them.
"That's not true."
I looked back up at Edward, was he serious? I pointed to my blood red eyes, "Does it look like I'm lying? I drink blood Edward, I still look like I'm eighteen. I'm thirty-eight though, Edward! I should have wrinkles and stretch marks, Edward! But, all I have are these scars."
"I wasn't talking about that," he walked over to me and knelt down in front of me, he took my hands and held them in my lap. He still smelled as sweet as ever, his skin was still soft and wonderful to the touch, I didn't take my hands out of his, I couldn't, it felt too nice, "You said that I didn't love you, that's the biggest lie there is. I love you so much, Bella, I always have."
"I'm not Bella anymore, I'm Cordelia. I've been Cordelia for the past twenty years, I can never be Bella again. She died in the woods."
Edward put his hand around my neck and bent me down, I felt his breath on my mouth, his nose touching mine, his eyes looking deeply into mine, "I don't believe that," his mouth touched mine. It was just like how I remembered it; I didn't mean to kiss him back. It just happened, it felt right, it felt amazing.
And then the kiss went beyond what I remembered.
Edward pushed me onto the bed; his hands were roaming everywhere, rememorizing me. I couldn't help but do the same as he kissed every scar Victoria gave me all those years ago.
And then he stopped, "Edward," I moaned, not only out of pure sexual frustration but because I knew this would never work and I told him that, "I'm not Bella anymore."
"Then who are you?" he was still on top of me, caressing my stomach, my face, my hair, his face buried into my neck. I pushed him off though and got up from the bed.
"I'm Cordelia Anne Nelluc and I'm whatever the person wants me to be for the night in return for some cash or some blood."
His jaw tightened, "How long have you been feeding on humans?"
"Since I was turned," I said softly, not wanting to look into his eyes. I could take almost anything at this point, the tough exterior had become more than a façade in the past years, but seeing that Edward Cullen was disappointed in me was more than I could take. "There was no one there to guide me."
"Things can still change though, Jasper drank from humans for a long time and he's doing really well. He spent five years in Denali with Alice and he can go to school now all the time, it's really wonderful.
"We can do the same thing, I can buy a huge house in the middle of nowhere and show you how to hunt animals and help you through the pain. It'll be hard, but oh Bella, it'll be so worth it in the end.
"It may take a few years maybe even a decade but," and he laughed here, "we have the time. And then we can meet up with everyone else and we can be one big family again."
He added softly, "We haven't been a family since I left you."
"I tore up the Cullen's?" I didn't want to be the harbinger of disaster for this family.
"No, not really. It wasn't your fault, Bella. Nothing could be your fault. Everyone thought that things would return to normal once Jasper and Alice were back, but a year after you disappeared I found out about it- and things couldn't be the same. Once Jasper came back he couldn't deal with my emotions so Alice and Jasper decided to travel for a few years. And then Rose decided she had enough of my sulking and her and Emmett left.
"Esme and Carlisle stayed though, I'm sure they didn't want to, but they knew someone needed to help me. We stayed in a small house in the middle of nowhere up until a few years ago when Carlisle decided I needed to go back into society, learn to live again, I guess.
"But when we came to New York last month I had no idea that you were here, Alice hadn't had any visions and to be honest, after you father died your case did too. Your trail died."
"Charlie died?" I hadn't known. I had never had the resources to check up on him and I just didn't trust myself enough to go back to Forks. I wasn't sure I could resist running into the house and telling Charlie I loved him one last time. And I wasn't sure I would be able to resist going to the large white house just to see if they were really there.
"Oh, Bella, darling I thought you would of known. I just figured you had checked up on him and such," he began to bring his hand up to my face to wipe the tears away, the tears that wouldn't fall.
"How? When?"
"A car accident. It was raining and the other person was drunk. Nine years ago. Tom Channing, that was who killed him, he didn't go to prison. He had a good lawyer," Edward picked up my shirt and put it on for me, but I wrenched to the side; trying to throw up the nothingness that was eating me inside before laughing, "Bella? Are you okay?"
I remembered Channing more than any other person I had killed before.
"Tom was the last person I killed. Eight years ago. His blood was stale from too much alcohol and drug use for too long, intravenous drugs are the worse since they affect the blood stream so directly. But, he was kind. I hated it though, the last memory I got from him was of him raping a young girl. It was so terrible and yet I was so happy that I had rid the world of him.
"But months afterwards the memory and the images stayed burned into my mind. That's something that's really easy to overlook, you don't forget a thing as a vampire. Nothing. I can tell you exactly what I was doing 32 hours and 56 minutes ago. And I just knew that I couldn't continue to build up this databank of human memories, not when they were all so horrible. Robberies, fights, drug use, gangs, murder, rape.
"How do vampires do it?"
"They don't have to-"
"Exactly! They don't have to. So I began asking around and I found Love Bites, it's a stupid name, but the idea was so wonderful. Now I could stay in one city that was big enough where no one would notice I never aged as long as I moved apartments every so often. And I got convenient food; it was like the world was tying a bow around my meal.
"And they made it so easy, giving me a list of apartments I could rent. I never knew there were so many humans in this world that were so sick, Edward."
Edward pulled my shirt down for me and sat me back down, he had socks in his hand now, I didn't even know I owned socks, he carefully placed them on my feet, "Bella," he started.
"Can you please stop calling me Bella? I'm not her anymore," I got up, stepping on his hand in the process, "Sorry."
"Put the sweat pants on and I'll think about it," I pulled the pants on, thankful for their strong, thick fabric; with the force I used they might of broken, "You're just not Cordelia to me, you are and always will be my Bella. My silly Bella."
"Then why did you leave?" I couldn't help it, the question had to be asked.
"Because I was stupid and foolish and naïve. I thought leaving you would be the best thing I could do for you," he looked me up and down and then again touched my permanently bruised eye lids, "Obviously I was wrong. I still love you, Isabella." I didn't say anything about the error in name, "Did that kiss not mean anything to you?"
I stared at him blankly and then answering with brutal honesty, "Depending on who it came from? Fifteen to twenty bucks assuming I did a good job on sucking the blood out of their system."
He turned around, vampire speed, and kicked my full-length mirror, shattering it.
"I liked that mirror."
Edward placed his hands over the bridge of his nose, a gesture I had seen before, "I'll buy you a new one," he was breathing heavily and although I couldn't see his eyes I was certain they were black as night.
"You don't have to. You don't have to do anything. You're good at that," I said, not meaning to be so harsh. The truth hurts, though.
"Yeah, I guess I am," I looked back at him, shocked that he had agreed, "But, Bella, I want to help you. Please. What I did in Forks that day; it was stupid. It was the worse mistake of my life-"
"Second worse," I said quietly, forgetting that he would hear.
"What was my first?" he looked down the ground, hands in his pockets, studying the immense lack of detail in the carpet.
"Not changing me when I asked the first time."
"I didn't believe you, at the time," he let out a huge sigh, I noted how when things got incredibly emotional human characteristics became more natural, "I was still holding on to this glimmer of hope that I was just some teenage fascination for you and you would soon lose interest and leave me-"
"So you left me?"
"No! Well, not because I thought you were infatuated with me. I left you when I realized that what we had was something more, something very real. And that it could hurt you. Do you think I could live with knowing that I hurt you?"
"What have you been doing these past two decades?"
Edward walked back over to me and brushed his hand along my jaw, "I thought you would get over me."
I walked closer to him, putting as little space as possible between us now, "Your not someone I can get over, Edward."
He kissed me, softly and gently like when I was human, but with so much more intensity. "Don't let me go," I said against his lips and his hands wrapped around me tighter, lifting me from the ground.
"I won't. Never again."
And we stayed like that, his arms around my waist my legs around his, my arms around his neck and in his hair. I had forgotten how wonderful this was, kissing someone was one thing, but kissing someone with feelings behind the kiss was breathtaking.
Edward was the first to pull back, "Will you let me help you?"
Would I let Edward help me? I knew I didn't want to continue to feed on humans, but I also knew how hard it was going to be to swear off them. I had seen how hard it was for Jasper and he hadn't fed on humans in years, but with Edward there for me it would be a little easier.
And I definitely wanted to renew the relationship with Edward.
I looked back to Edward and I could see in his face that he wasn't sure of the answer, "It'll be really hard."
"All good things are," Edward's lips went to my throat and I smiled, the familiar sensation being relived.
"And time consuming."
He went to the other side of my throat, "We have plenty of time."
"Where would we live?"
His lips, traveled down my neck, skimming the shirts neckline, "Where ever you want."
And that's what happened. Edward and I bought a large house on 40 acres of land in Polson, Montana.
The first few years were hard, even with 40 acres of land between any other humans I could smell every single drop of human blood. Edward spent long hours scouring the house for every drop of human smell, after a month of this the house would have been clean enough to perform open-heart surgeries.
If I didn't devour the patient first.
Edward taught me what to hunt; what would be most satisfying, what was easiest to catch, what was hardest, what had the most blood and what could carry me over the longest.
The blood wasn't as delectable as human blood but animals didn't have the same memories as humans did, I never had to see any more images of girls being raped or murdered.
Nearly a year later things were looking better, whenever I felt that tickle of hunger my thoughts went to what animal I was going to hunt, not what kind of guy I wanted for the night.
"Bella?" Edward asked me one night, when were out on the lake.
The lake was my favorite part of this house. The water was warm from the summer air and as we floated we had begun to play the question game I faintly remembered from the beginning of our relationship.
"Yeah," I said softly, floating myself to where he was.
"The scar-"
"Which one?" I asked sardonically.
"The one over your heart," he sat himself up and pulled me over to him.
"That one," it was the last scar Victoria had given me.
"It's supposed to be an 'E', isn't it?"
"Yeah, I assumed it was Victoria's idea to write your name over my heart, somewhere I would always remember it. I've always told myself that she wanted to carve out your whole name but she was too stupid to know how to spell it."
He laughed and let several more wonderful moments go by, "I love you, Bella."
Over the year I had returned everything he had given me, except those three words. Every moment he could Edward told me that he loved me and he, being such the gentlemen, never asked me about why I never returned the gesture.
It was hard for me to understand why I couldn't say it back to him, when I was human I had no problem telling him of my love; I didn't even think twice about it. But, now- maybe it was because of what we had both been through.
Maybe what he was really saying was that "I trust you, Bella. Can you trust me?" we already knew about our love for each other.
"I love you. And I trust you, too."
And for the first time in a long time I saw my favorite crooked smile and I knew that no matter how hard things got (and they would get harder) as long as Edward was there for me, things would be okay and work out.
We floated in silence for a little while longer, "Edward?"
"Yeah."
"Why were you at Love Bites that night?"
"I don't know. I had heard about it and thought maybe the change would do me good. I'm not proud of that decision," I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, had he forgotten the twenty year decision I had made? "But, I am happy that I went there," he kissed the side of my face, "Maybe it was fate."
I smiled up at him, his features lit up by the full moon, the water lapping at our necks, "Maybe it was."
This was honestly just supposed to be a cute little ficlet about Edward telling Bella what he went through when he was changed, but the story and the characters pretty much took over and wrote themselves. That's always nice, but it sucks when you get stuck.
Happy reading and don't forget to check out my other stories.