This is my first fanfic :) I believe in happy endings, after all, if you can't have a happy ending in the world of make-belief, what hope do we have for the real world?
Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I do not.
Songs That Inspire: My Sundown - Jimmy Eat World, Love You Til' The End - The Pogues, Bullet With Butterfly Wings - The Smashing Pumpkins, Save Me - Aimee Mann, How It Ends - Devotchka
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT IN LATER CHAPTERS
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PROLOGUE
EPOV
I hadn't seen her in 14 long months, for that matter, neither had Alice -the only member of our family who still hoped to one day see the old Bella. To hold her and kiss her cheek and tell her how much she had missed her. My heart ached as I reluctantly observed Alice's pained and wishful musings. I knew better, I had killed the old Bella and replaced her with a furious creature, she was not a newborn, but an animalistic powerhouse of rage wrapped up in a beautiful young woman who still looked like she was made of delicately fragile glass. I had given her body over to a sadistic demon. Wherever Bella was, I hoped she was not in there, trapped behind the layers of incomprehensible fury and bloodlust.
"Edward, I'm ready."
We had arrived home from our honeymoon only a week before and already my wife was eager to join me in the shadows of eternity. Suddenly I was nervous; my family was outside my bedroom, waiting for us to say goodbye until Bella awoke to our world. Please, please if there is a God, don't let me kill her.
No, what I had done was worse than death. She would never reach heaven now; she was doomed to forever walk the earth, the pure beauty that was her soul cowering to the primal force of her instincts. I had taken destruction for granted, comforted and secure in the fact that if ever I should wish to forfeit "immortality", the flames of oblivion would take me to peace. We believed ourselves immortal, but we can be destroyed. We are lucky. But not Isabella, she was something else altogether as the Volturi had discovered. I shuddered at the memory…
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All around was chaos, in the throes of agony I forced my eyes open and saw her, my Bella, standing defiant in the middle of our meadow, her face twisted in rage, her eyes coal black, the royalty of our kind littered at her feet. We were all doubled over in a painful hell only Bella could deliver. We were all burning inside. Jane was writhing a few yards from us. She was experiencing for the first time what was not merely just a taste of her own medicine, but a version that was distilled, concentrated and amplified. Nearby I heard Renata begging for death.
Any moment now the pain would take over and it would be all that I would know – would she kill us? Were these my last moments with her? I fixed my eyes on her face and thought the words, knowing she would hear since I could not.
Bella, I love you.
Suddenly it stopped and Bella collapsed.
I had never seen a vampire fall unconscious before. My hearing returned to me and froze me to my place. I could hear her thoughts.
I can do this.
She was not unconscious, but she was not here either. Another voice screamed from her mind. It sounded like Bella and at the same time it was utterly unrecognizable, the voice was frenzied, shrill and violent.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET UP! DESTROY THEM BEFORE THEY KILL YOU, YOU FOOL!
Stay still. Let it end, please, let them tear me piece by piece and throw me into whatever is next. If it is nothing, if it is hell, it cannot be worse than this. Let Edward and I be released. Oh, I am so sorry for everything, I wish they could know, I wish he could know how dearly I still love him. I wish I could stop…Let it end.
We were standing around her now, a quiet circle starring down at a dormant apocalypse.
JPOV
There was a desperate conflict raging within the body at our feet. Somehow I knew that my newest sister was giving us our chance.
Never, ever in all of my existence and all my experience with newborns had I even heard rumours of one like her. My heart broke for Edward. For Alice and Esme and Carlisle. For our family. For Bella.
It was clear now they were never meant to be, Bella was never meant for our world.
Edward. She must be destroyed, even she knows that.
I couldn't bring myself to look at him as he sank to his knees a foot from his new bride. I could not even fathom how it would be were this my Alice. I did not wait for his reply but sprang upon her motionless form and dragged her away from those we both loved. They should not watch this.
"Demetri. Felix." Aro had regained himself. His two prized guards joined me around Bella. They were both still visibly shaken. I felt it all.
AlicePOV
No, no, no, no…
BPOV
I could feel their meagre attempts to pull at my limbs. They stood back a moment, baffled, as was I. One of the Volturi guard bent down and tried desperately to tear at me with his teeth. It was a strange sensation, like a light tugging.
A distance away I could hear Esme and Alice quietly and tearlessly sobbing.
In my mind I thanked Jasper for his discretion and I knew how this was hurting him. These thoughts were foreign, too rational and calm as of late, fit for the end. Everything felt surreal.
I hear the click of a lighter and then a tickling sensation on my arm. Nothing happens.
I couldn't even think about Edward. I don't deserve to.
But death was not coming. The demon within me knew it and gleefully rejoiced before I was ready to acknowledge it. There was no hope, I was stuck like this and I was going to kill everyone I have ever loved and then I was going to live thousands of years with nothing but my guilt to keep me company. I would let the demon take over, I would submit to my unnatural instincts and I would kill everyone and anyone that I could. Oh Holy God, was this what I was intended for? Am I a tool of extinction? What will become of me after when I have consumed all of the blood of the earth? My first vision of myself when I awoke clouded my head.
It was me, but I was seen from a great distance, a moving dot over a wide expense of dark nothingness.
How eerie it had been to awaken as a vampire and see what I saw. How tragic still that as I saw this Alice did not and she could not warn the others. I suspected that as long as I could see, she could not.
I knew now that the vision was earth. I was wandering aimlessly across the polluted waste that was once home to countless living things. I knew now that even the herbs were not safe from the consequence of my being; the humans would have unleashed their nuclear bombs, frantic to destroy the unknown terror that stalked them, uncaring about the casualties, their weak attempt to survive damning them all.
Would I eventually die of thirst? Would –
"You can't kill her." My dead heart seemed to shatter and the pieces soar at hearing my lover's voice, in my mind I could see it suspended within my chest, a supernova in a black night. His voice was cold and flat, underneath it was pain and sorrow and longing and a number of other emotions I could not define. I resisted the urge to use Jasper's power on Edward, if only to know how he felt. I was afraid it would be an opportunity of escape for my demon. Power corrupts…
CaPOV
Oh Edward...we can't keep her.
"No Carlisle, you can't kill her. I can hear it, I can hear her voice and she knows that she cannot be destroyed." His voice seemed to break on the last word, he was beside her in a flash, holding her hand to his heart, a tremor went through her but still she did not move.
Was she controlling her powers? Was there any hope at all?
EPOV
Edward?! You can hear me?
I clutched her hand tighter and told her I could. The monster within her was thrashing wildly now, angry to be so exposed and vulnerable, but I would not let go.
Edward, Edward! I love you; help us both how I love you!
A sob racked through my body, her despair was my own, "Bella, I love you too, forever and beyond. I am so sorry Bella…" My throat choked on the words. I had seen it in her mind, her thoughts anguished and desperately lonely as she thought of her future. I have no words to describe my corroding remorse. Unexpectedly her thoughts shifted.
"Aro? Why?"
If you can hear me, maybe Aro can hear me. He will know every thought it…I…have had. He may be able to help me appease the…darkness.
Aro was already beside me, he did not need to know why. He was eager to test his power on an accessible Bella. He was as terrified as the rest of us, but ever the collector, he was greedy and fascinated as well.
Jane's thoughts caught my attention. Her anger and embarrassment demanded that she too take advantage of Bella's vulnerability, but she was also scared of reawakening the beast. I growled at her.
Edward, please, please don't listen to what Aro hears.
My eagerness to please her in any way possible trumped my curiosity.
If only I had known what she had planned.
Aro eagerly touched his hand to hers. I held fast to her other hand, my focus jumped around from mind to mind, seeking thoughts that would be mild enough to endure. Esme and Alice were distraught, Carlisle was confused, his shock mingled with pain and pity for us, finally I settled on Emmett whose thoughts were a jumbled mess –
How could she be stronger than me? – Come back Bella… - How did this happen? HOW? – Emse, please don't cry. - …
He knew the answers to his questions. As a newborn she had been more volatile than any newborn had ever been. Her power became known quickly, she could hear our every thought, feel everything we felt – the fear and confusion often set her off, she was stronger than Emmett, nearly destroying our house altogether during her fits, she was faster than me, she was better prepared than Alice, on and on it went. She could take our power if she wished. For two weeks until the Denali clan came, in hopes of aiding us in our efforts to control Bella, she had been…everything she never was. Not only the hate and violence, but almost ruthlessly manipulative and self-centered, she was not someone I could understand anymore and I suspected, deep in the pit of my being, that the Bella we had known was fading. Again I wronged her with my hopeless thoughts, she could hear me giving up on her at the same time that the Denali clan burst into our home, alarmed by the degree of destruction to the house. Kate's power of electricity was her first great tool of horror and I, her target.
Try though she did, Kate could never project the shocks from her body, Bella did that and more, again and again I was shocked, the burning felt like the transformation. She could take everything we had and throw it back at us times 100 stronger and we could do nothing to control her. Her shield was stronger than ever, neither physical nor mental attacks could touch her, it was a second skin of invincibility and here it was again at work, though Bella willed it away with all her might, she could not be destroyed.
Suddenly I wanted to run from her like she had run from me after jolting my body with all the power of Zeus himself, I was ashamed as she had been at how I destroyed her. After she disappeared, it was only a week later that the Volturi arrived; a week was all it took to notify the Volturi of her devastation, though they did not believe the extent of her power. They had been ready to destroy me as punishment for letting her flee when Alice had a vision alerting us to this meadow where Bella awaited. Together with my family, the Denalis and all of the Volturi we had come for her and she beckoned to us, calming and enchanting us until we had all assembled. I was too overwhelmed with seeing her to notice I couldn't hear. Caius had been the first to fall.
Aro's normally cheery disposition was completely gone as he hovered over her.
Finally he opened his eyes, a bizarre mixture of sympathy and avarice adorned his papery white features.
"No my dear, I am afraid you are correct, we cannot end you…but I understand now what must be done. Alec!"
"Yes Master?"
AroPOV
Everything about her was unknown, new. How I wanted her, how I feared her, how I feared the fact that as I took in her every thought and memory, she took in my own. Somehow we understood each other; I understood the two entities that battled within her beautiful and sinister mind. I also immediately understood that the evil within her considered me nothing more than a means to attain what it wanted - blood and power, an established empire fit for a Queen.
A part of me wished the weaker, gentler part of this creature, the only one who seemed to be able to confront the demon, would take control - for although she would then not be mine, she would not be a danger to my way of life. I knew we must submit to her and how strange and foreign a feeling that was.
"Alec, you must use your skills on Bella, she will help you in your effort to restrain her. She is coming with us to Volterra." Everyone in the clearing gasped except the two females who sobbed harder.
Edward glared across at me, "I'm coming with you."
I knew her conditions and in my mind I conveyed to him what must happen. The part of her that was pure and sweet would not allow him to come with her, to endure her any longer. The violent swirling red part of her demanded that he come, even the dark within her longed for him.
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