A/N: If you're protective of Edward and Bella's relationship, I sincerely suggest you don't read this. Think of that little bit at the beginning of A Series of Unfortunate Events – if you want good things for this couple, this story isn't going to be your cup of tea. I like the Twilight universe, mostly; I like Bella, sort of; I find it hard to think of Edward (or Jacob, when it comes to being in a romantic relationship with Bella) without internally wincing due to the problems in their relationship. So shippers be warned; here be icebergs.
On a less metaphorically nautical note, I've tried to use American terminology here because I know it can be irritating when the terminology used is not in keeping with the country the source material is from, but I'm bound to have slipped up at some stage; Wikipedia and Word's language function are my friends, but that doesn't help with the things that are so entrenched in my mind that I wouldn't think to check for cross-cultural differences. Feel free to let me know if there's something that's been Australianised or mixed up. If it's instrumental to the story, I'll most likely leave it and just make a note of it for the future rather than revamping the whole thing, but if it's minor I'll change it.
Warning: There is a spoiler for The Giver in the sixth chapter of the story.
Also, thanks to my brother for betaing this! I tend not to mention him on individual stories and chapters as he doesn't want me to mention him by name, but… well, it's Twilight; I'd be remiss in my sisterly teasing duties not to make use of this opportunity. You might not have read the books, but you've read a sample of its fanfiction, and I'll always remember that. (Teasing aside, the gratitude is completely genuine.)
"Which colleges are you applying for, again, Bells?" Charlie asked, his voice reverberating through the living room in his attempt to be heard over the action movie we were watching, or rather that he was watching while I read. The empty plates from dinner rested on the floor beside us, waiting for one of us to hop up and take them back to the kitchen.
"Um, I'm not sure yet," I hedged. It's times like these when I wished I were a better liar, or that Charlie wasn't trained in detecting lies; his eyebrows shot right up, a sceptical look on his face. I would tell him the University of Alaska if I thought I would be able get it passed him, even if I hadn't yet convinced Edward to use it as a cover to change me. Hoping it would decrease his suspicion somewhat, I added, completely truthful, "I'm not sure what I'd even want to study yet."
Fortunately, Charlie merely said, "You'd better get on that, then. You're a smart kid, but deadlines are still deadlines." Regardless of whether or not he really bought it, I was grateful for his brevity.
"I'll think about it," I assured him, my mind focused on ways to convince my stubborn boyfriend that this was what I wanted. He was still adamant about not wanting anyone to turn me, and I was running out of ideas to change his mind. Any reasoning I threw at him was dismissed by his claim that it would eventually ruin my life and probably condemn me to boot.
"That is not realistic," Charlie proclaimed, his attention drawn back to the television by a particularly malicious fight scene. "I don't care how much you've trained or how much steroids you're on, that just wouldn't happen."
I tuned out the description of just why that particular move wouldn't have done what they showed it doing, not willing to be distracted. Distractions beget distractions, so if I let myself be tempted that way I would soon find myself ninety years old and still human, with Emmett laughing his head off whenever he saw me with Edward. No, I had to act. Even if it wasn't the best plan, I had to do something.
Throwing myself at a vampire nomad wouldn't work; it would more than likely just result in my death. Going behind Edward's back wouldn't be feasible, either; it would take time and effort to convince any of the other Cullens to do it, and by then he'd have noticed their uncertainty it in their thoughts. Approaching the Volturi was an option, and it would circumvent the prohibition on any of the Cullens biting humans, but it wasn't a good one either. The idea of facing Jane and Aro again was unnerving, it would be expensive, and I'd then have to work out how to get back via a plane full of what would appear to be large, delectable packets of blood. That's not even counting the potential repercussions it would have if the Volturi found out that the Cullens weren't going to change me.
It was a snap decision, but it felt right to announce to Charlie, "I'm going to apply for the University of Alaska." Evidently, I will never be able to become a vampire without Edward's help or permission. He wanted me to go to college? I'd go to college. And, while I was at it, I'd prove to him that I could be happy with just his family, and remind him for all the reasons why changing me would be better than leaving me like this.
"That's great," he replied, his eyes still fixed on the TV. "Wait. Isn't that a bit far away?"
No; that's the point, Edward won't ever change me if we're close enough for you to notice the difference. "It is, but it has an excellent program. There's nothing around here with anything nearly as acclaimed. I'll apply for them too in case, and I guess I could choose one of them if you'd prefer, but…"
"No," Charlie said, as I knew he would. "You should go where you want to go. Pick Alaska or whatever. Don't stay nearby because of me. I'm a big boy; I can take care of myself." He reassuringly patted the place where his gun holster would usually rest.
"If you're sure."
"I am. Hey, how are the colleges near where your mom lives? Renée would love it if you could live near her."
"Um, she's still moving around a lot. Anywhere near the baseball circuit would work for her, really. And I've gotten used to cold weather now, anyway. I might melt if I go back there." It was a flimsy half-truth of a joke, but it set Charlie off anyway. By the time he finished laughing, his attention easily slid back to the TV, the conversation forgotten for the time being.
Silently, not wanting to stick around only for the conversation to reopen, I collected up the plates and returned to the kitchen to wash them, waiting impatiently as the hot water and dishwashing detergent filled the sink with its bubbly warmth. My mind wandered back to thinking about college as my hands cleaned as if on autopilot. Never having to wash dishes, I thought suddenly as I stacked the plates up for them to drip dry, is another perk of being a vampire.
"Charlie," I said as I went back into the kitchen. "I'm going up to bed. Can you put the plates away when you're done? They should be almost dry by then."
"Sure, kid. Goodnight."
"You too."
I took my book upstairs to read in bed while waiting for Edward. I wasn't ready to tell him my decision yet – I wanted more time to work out the most effective way to present it to him – but I longed for his soothing company. Sometimes I thought of him as my own guardian angel, watching over me as I slept, protecting me from danger and nightmares alike.
If only he didn't think of himself as the complete opposite.
-s-
The next day was one of those rare days when the sun won its battle against the clouds and managed to stay out for long enough to warm up the town. Most of my classmates were acting as if their brains had melted from the heat; no one seemed to be able to concentrate very long, their gazes constantly flickering to the nearest window and the little square glimpse of the outside world it provided. Back in my days at Phoenix High School, my thoughts would have been similarly occupied. Now, however, they were fixated on the one downside of the sunny turn: the Cullens weren't at school, and couldn't be seen around town until it had gone away again. I tried to enjoy the warmth and light, everything that was usually missing in Forks, but it was hard to truly enjoy something that forced those I loved into hiding, however temporary it might be. It didn't help that Jessica and Mike had gotten into an argument and broken up the night before, leaving Jessica in a foul mood all morning. She wasn't enjoying the sun, either, if her continuous stream of whispered snippiness was anything to go by.
"Finally," she muttered as the bell rang to signal the end of the period, glaring at the back of Mike's head as she stuffed her notebook and pencil case in her bag. "Come on, let's go before the line gets long."
Obligingly, I hurriedly pack my own bag, although with a fair bit more care than she had. "Ignore him," I whispered as we walked passed his blond head, and the effort Jess expended forcing herself not to look back at him seemed almost tangible.
Jess' determination to get as far away from Mike as possible saw us uncharacteristically close to the front of the cafeteria line. We were sitting at our usual table by the time Mike and Eric came into the lunch room, so I suspected that the need for distance had been reciprocated. "So, Edward and his family are camping?" she asked. "Did they say where they were going?"
"They are. And nearby, I think. They weren't expecting the weather to last long, so they didn't want to go too far afield and then get hit by the rain coming back."
Another set of trays slid onto the table as Angela and Lauren sat in the vacant seats beside us. "How are you holding up?" Lauren asked, as blunt as ever.
"Not too well," Jess admitted softly, before abruptly changing the subject with a look of forced bravado. "But we weren't talking about that; we were talking about the Cullens' camping trip. I wish my parents let me miss school whenever the weather was nice. I'm surprised you don't go with them, Bella."
"Charlie wouldn't let me either. Besides, I'm not really an outdoors person. We'd probably have to cut the trip short for a hospital visit." Not to mention the fact that they would want to hunt, and it wouldn't be safe to be near them, especially Jasper, while they were lost to that instinct.
Fortunately, Jess didn't press any further. Unfortunately, the reason for this was that her attention had been diverted by Mike as he and Eric play-wrestled in the line. It was evident that Mike was dominating the fight as he pulled the other boy into a loose headlock. "He's so immature," Jessica complained, spearing her spaghetti onto her fork with no small amount of gusto. "It's like nothing's serious, ever. I was trying to talk to him, really talk to him, about what we're both going to do after we graduate, and he just kept making jokes about it all."
"Leaving high school can be scary, especially if you don't know what you want to do," Angela reasoned. "Maybe he's just deflecting."
"What, you going to be a psychologist or something?" Jessica snapped. "Leave that psychoanalysis crap for someone else. All I know is that my boyfriend – ex-boyfriend – apparently doesn't care about us enough to even discuss what's going to happen after school before we end up in different states."
"Actually," Angela said, a little snippy herself now, "I am going to be a psychologist. And you don't have to take it out on me; I was just trying to help."
Jessica visibly deflated, her shoulders and head drooping and eyes closing as a hand flew to her temple, a soldier told she wouldn't have to fight anymore. "Sorry. I know. I'm just really frustrated right now."
"That's alright," Lauren said, being surprisingly nice for once. "Anyone would be."
Ben, who had stayed behind to finish discussing some theory with our history teacher, was making his way over with a tray laden with food, so Angela said quickly, "Why don't we do something tonight? Just the three of us. Movie night at my house. Take our mind off of things – boys, college, everything."
"That would be great," Jess said. "No school talk?"
"No school talk."
"I'm in," Lauren promised.
I wasn't sure what to say. Jess needed company, so we had some kind of unwritten obligation to help her if possible, but I'd been planning on visiting the Cullens to strategize with Alice and let Edward know about my decision. "I can't. I have to do some errands after school."
Lauren rolled her eyes, back to her usual snide self. "Oh, come on. If you don't want to, just say it."
"I do want to," I insisted. "They just really have to be done today." A glance at Jess' face, sporting a hurt expression as she kept watching Mike, had me adding, "It should only take about two hours. I could meet you after that."
-s-
As it turned out, I didn't have the chance to discuss strategies with Alice. She, Rosalie, Emmett and Jasper were about to leave for a hunt when I arrived, and the coal black hue of their eyes was a testimony in itself to how badly they needed to go. All she said on the matter was a note that she passed me with, "I see it working!" written on it in her elegant handwriting before she darted out the door after the others, the three of them simultaneously, at least to my eye, becoming blurs of motion heading towards the forest.
"Bella," Esme greeted me, her voice a tinkling welcome as she wrapped me in an icy hug. "It's wonderful to see you. We didn't expect you today. Did anyone notice you coming? And how's Charlie?"
Oh, the rapid-fire frequency of syntactic leaps when they're in a vampire's mind. It never failed to amuse me how they could dart from one topic to another as if they were the most related things in the world. "He's great. Work's been quiet lately, so he's happy. I told my friends I had some errands to run; if they ask I can say you asked me to water your plants. I can't stay long, though, because I'm meeting up with them later." I ran over what Esme had said in my head, mentally checking that I had responded to everything. "Oh! And it's great to see you too." She pulled back from the hug, resulting in a strange sensation where the warmth rushed back in even as the affectionate comfort disappeared.
"You're here to see Edward, of course," she said, and she stepped away to reveal the son in question standing behind her. "Carlisle and I will be in the study if you need us." Before I could blink, she had vanished, her mind obviously too distracted to temper her speed the way she usually did.
"It's really strange to have someone who was just standing in front of you suddenly be gone," I admitted to Edward, heading for the lounge room. It wasn't as if going to his bedroom would really afford any more privacy than here, and Carlisle or Esme overhearing my arguments might even help my case. The temptation to touch him was almost overwhelming, but I knew that that would only distract me from my purpose there, so I sat on one of the single armchairs. His happy facial expression faltered for a split second as he noticed the peculiarity, and he turned watchful eyes on me.
"Is something wrong, Bella?" he asked, his tone almost unnervingly polite.
"Not at all," I replied, "but we do need to talk. About when you're going to change me."
"I thought we agreed to postpone this conversation for a few years."
"No, you agreed to that. I wasn't given the choice."
"I won't change you until you understand the consequences of such an action," he insisted firmly. "It's not reversible."
"And when will you decide I know enough to understand them? Ever?" His stony-faced silence answered my question as surely as any confirmation would have; he would delay as long as he could, but he never intended to change me. "You're not waiting to be satisfied with my understanding, you're waiting to be satisfied with yours. Edward, that's insane! You're never going to be a hundred precent certain of what vampirism means for someone's soul. That's as good as saying there's nothing I can do, understanding the ramifications or not, to change your mind."
"I'm not going to inflict that upon you. I refuse to do it."
"And I refuse to believe that something that you have no control over can damn you to hell. Someone did this to you, Edward. How could you be blamed for something you had no control over?"
"But there's the rub, Bella. You do have control over this. If it comes down to intent, like you say, then you have the wrong intent."
"So maybe you should have left me there when James bit me, then," I snapped, before refocusing myself. "Fine. It's your choice whether or not you're involved. But I am going to become a vampire, with or without your approval."
"Who will change you, then? Only Carlisle would have the control to do it, and he wouldn't go behind my back like that. You could go to the Volturi to do it, I suppose, but how then how will you get back? What will you do in the meantime – go on killing sprees? Is that how you really want to live your life, Bella?"
"I want to live it with you." The whining edge to my tone embarrassed me, made me feel even more human in comparison to this immortal, ageless being. "Would you really not come to Italy with me?"
"No, Bella, I wouldn't." I stared at him in shock. A moment later, I had been moved across from my chair to his lap, my head resting against his shoulder, his arms curled around me like a cocoon. If only when he let me go it would be as a butterfly rather than a caterpillar. "I wouldn't go with you, because you wouldn't be going. I would be spending every second of the day convincing you not to. This can't be what you want."
"What if it is?" I whispered, and he sighed, a defeated sound that made my heart ache.
"It hurts me when you talk about throwing your life away like this," he said.
And, because it felt necessary, I said, "I'm sorry."
"What about a compromise?" he asked, his hand playing with my hair now, lifting it and dropping it and wrapping tendrils around his fingers like a spring. "We go to college together. We graduate. Then we see."
"How's that a compromise? It sounds an awful lot like your original plan."
"Very well. Not a compromise, but a postponement. We'll both use that time to consider it. Three years is really not that long. If it ensures that we can go into this with peace of mind, or avoid it with peace of mind, then it's worth it. I can't promise anything; surely changing someone who isn't on the brink of death is as bad as choosing to be changed. But we can discuss it again then."
"The Volturi, Aro…"
"Aro is satisfied for now with the knowledge that Alice has seen you turned. I will explain to him that we need to wait so as not to arouse suspicion. If you were to die and we were to move suddenly, it would be suspicious. If we wait until we have all already gone…"
"I was thinking of teaching with a double major in English and biology be satisfactory," I admitted, my voice muffled against his shirt but still clear enough for his vampire hearing. "I'm going to start my application essays this weekend."
"You're going to go?" His face lit up like a child's on Christmas morning, mesmerising me with its beauty. No wonder vampires rarely struggle to find prey. Even ignoring the superhuman strength and speed, they'd be able to lure them in with a simple smile. Had he been the hunting sort, Edward would never have trouble catching victims who liked men. It made me wonder how I'd managed to hold out against this for so long, to be honest.
"Yes. You and Charlie both want me to go, so I guess I'm going." I wanted him to acknowledge my resistance. I didn't care if that made me an immature, needy high school graduate – he apparently wanted me to live that life, after all. Being a pawn was rarely fun, and, even though I knew they both just wanted what they thought was best for me, I wanted him to know that I definitely didn't appreciate it. I couldn't resist the parting shot, "Besides, I might not want to be a teacher, but I figure that teaching skills are probably eternally useful."
"You'll enjoy it, Bella," he assured me, as if saying it would make it so.
"We'll see," I countered.