AN: Hey so I started writing this on tumblr and people liked it so I decided to continue it here. Here's the original prompt if you're interested:
can y'all imagine the drama and angst of it all if bella had completely forgotten about edward and the cullens after her vampire transformation?
Just a disclaimer, this is based on my limited knowledge about retrograde amnesia and how that works, so if I get anything wrong, and anyone's got sources, let me know. Basically, what I know is this: muscle memory and memory about speech and definitions of words aren't usually affected by amnesia. If you use it a lot without much thought, (your native language, basic movements, etc.) you're going to probably keep it. But specific names, dates, events, images… those are a different type of memory, called episodic memory. Based on what Alice went through, I'd say she has total retrograde amnesia, but only with episodic memory because she still remembered how to talk and move. And not with her own identity, (ID Amnesia is a different thing) because as far as I know she didn't not recognize herself in the mirror/dissociate with her name. So I'm applying the same concept to Bella here.
Perhaps in a future fic, I might explore what it would be like, if her memory loss was a little more severe. Who knows? My muse is fickle.
Also, just a heads up, I don't know how long this is going to be, or when I'm going to update, but let's just see where this goes, shall we?
CHAPTER ONE: RETROGRADE
…
The doctor's voice was cold. "There's nothing to put back. There's no body to go back to.
The body of Lia Kahn is dead. Be grateful you didn't die with it."
― Robin Wasserman, Skinned
…
My first memory was of searing pain.
Flames burned inside my veins. Flames so white-hot and all-consuming that they seemed like they would never be quenched. For a few seconds that felt like an eternity, they nearly drove me mad. Until suddenly, the heart that had been pounding furiously in my chest, spreading those flames throughout my entire body stopped, and they vanished. And I was sane again.
As the sound my frantic heartbeat subsided into silence, momentarily, I was full of nothing but relief. I took a deep, unnecessary breath, relishing my newfound freedom for a second. But in the next second when I first opened my eyes, the sight that greeted my vision was so strange, that I felt the dread creeping back in again.
Six perfect strangers stood there waiting, hovering anxiously over my prone form. And though there was nothing about their demeanor that was at all threatening—their flawless marble faces were all awash with wonder and concern, and their mesmerizing topaz eyes glittered with warmth—I couldn't help but feel a growing sense of unease.
I didn't know these people—these strangely pale, perfect people. But from the way they were watching me, I got the distinct impression that they knew me.
I looked them over for a moment, confused by the apparent familiarity in their expressions, and trying to figure it out. There were four men and two women in the group. And they all shared some marked similarities—chalky pale skin, unusual amber eyes, perfect, straight, angular features. But despite the resemblance, they clearly weren't family.
The girls were complete opposites. One was tiny, pencil-thin and had a short crop of spiky black hair that was standing in all directions. And the other was much taller, with legs for days, incredible curves, and a long wave of platinum blond hair spilling down her back.
The boys were different too. One was huge, with thick, bear-like arms, a goofy smile, and short black hair. Two were blonde, though one had grotesque half-moon shaped gouges marring his exposed skin every few inches that screamed dangerous, and the other, with his soft, paternal expression, looked like he wouldn't hurt a fly. And the last and youngest-looking of them all was the lean kind of athletic, with a rumpled mop of russet hair on his head.
After my cursory assessment, I tried to wrack my brain for any information about this strange collective hovering expectantly around me. But before I'd opened my eyes there was only white-hot pain and an infinite blackness stretching back as far as I could remember. As far as I knew, this was the first time we'd ever met.
In fact, it was the first time I'd ever met anyone. So why were they looking at me like that? Like they were waiting for me to do something. Like they cared about me. Like something important had just had happened.
It didn't make any sense.
But as I reviewed the last few minutes of my existence—the only few minutes of my existence—in my mind, I realized that none of it did.
Where was I? came my next bewildered thought. I felt something cold and hard underneath me. A supportive piece of furniture of some kind, I guessed. But that was far from enlightening.
How did I get here? I wondered next, growing more frantic with everyone minute that answers alluded me. Where even is here? I see walls… am I in a building? A home? A hospital?
The blinding overhead lamp, and litany of beeping monitors surrounding me suggested the latter. But I swore the walls were all wrong. Even though I couldn't really rationalize why. It was just a gut feeling.
After a moment of examining my surroundings, I turned back to the six beautiful strangers. I blinked at them quizzically. Then, for the first time in my life, I opened my mouth to speak:
"Who are you guys?"
I didn't recognize the sound of my own voice. Which shouldn't have come as a surprise. After all, this was the first time I had ever spoken. But for some reason the words felt weird in my throat. Too resonant. Too melodious. Like my muscles had practice in forming words, but had never moved that way before.
Odd.
But even more odd was everyone's' reactions to my rather innocuous question. I'd expected a simple introduction, and maybe an explanation of what I was doing here in this strange, homey, hospital-esque environment. But what I got instead was far more troubling.
The pixie-like girl was the first to react. Her golden eyes bugged wide with comprehension and horror as soon as I completed my sentence. Like she was seeing the first few frames of a familiar scary movie. Or she was recognizing the first symptoms of a terrible disease.
Then the young russet-haired boy reacted next, his alabaster face contorting into the same lines of fear, just a fraction of a second later. Though there was an extra layer of emotion in his face. His horror cut deeper. Far deeper. Like I had personally wounded him.
While I wondered what on earth could have possibly been wrong with my question—what on earth was making these two people look at me like I'd just announced I had a terminal illness—the russet-haired boy and the short black-haired girl shared a significant look. They didn't say anything to each other, just locked eyes for an unusually long amount of time. But I couldn't help but get the impression that they were having some kind of conversation anyway.
It was eerie.
Like they were reading each other's minds.
The rest of the strangers present paused for a moment, looking at the silent pair with concerned interest. And when the moment was over—when the two young strangers finally broke eye contact—they all inclined their heads towards the tiny girl with the spiky hair. Like she was some kind of authority. Or at least, that she would have the best idea of what was going on.
I looked at her too. I was in desperate need of some clarification here.
What the hell was going on?
She pursed her lips in what was almost a grimace. Like she resented what she was going to have to say next, and was searching for a way to soften the blow. But ultimately, there was no avoiding the issue entirely.
I braced myself. Though for what, I wasn't sure.
The pixie-like girl swallowed, then abruptly looked me dead in the eyes. I jumped a little. Her gaze was so intense—absolutely piercing.
"Bella?" she asked hesitantly in a soft voice that peeled like bells.
I recognized my own name—the only thing familiar so far—so I inclined my head in her direction, waiting for her to elaborate.
"Bella, how do you feel?" she asked again.
I regarded the girl curiously. I felt fine. Well, now that the fire in my veins was gone. But I was still hopelessly confused.
Who was this girl? And why did she care. Did I know her? Was I supposed to know her?
I swallowed, and avoided her gaze, feeling more awkward and out of the loop every second. "Um… I'm alright now, I guess. I'm not in any pain. But… who are you again?"
I tried to play it off as casually as I could. Hopefully she wouldn't be offended. I swore we had never met before. But the sincerity in her face was hard to fake. Maybe there had been some mix-up and she had mistaken me for someone else? I didn't know.
Apparently, that was the wrong answer, though.
The girl blinked in rapid alarm. "You really don't remember me?" she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
I backpedaled fast. "Well I was in a lot of pain just a few minutes ago and…"
I tried to wrack my brain again. Maybe it was just buried deep. This girl seemed adamant that I knew her, and knew her well. But after a solid fifteen seconds of reviewing the totality of my memories I still couldn't place her face. Couldn't place any of their faces, really. But then again, as I wracked my brain for answers, I realized I couldn't place any faces at all.
Didn't I have a mother? And a father? I thought, logically.
I understood in vague, abstract terms what those words were supposed to mean. And I understood in vague, abstract terms that I was supposed to have them because, well, all living things came from somewhere and it seemed like I was alive at the moment. But this was all very detached information. Encyclopedic. There were no images to accompany these ideas. No pictures of what those hypothetical parents should look like. No recollections of any of the activities we might have shared together.
No recollections of anything beyond a few minutes ago. Which was weird.
The spiky-haired girl grabbed my shoulders suddenly. I jolted at the movement both because it was unexpected, and because her hands were deceptively strong for their size. Then, once her grip was secure, she looked me dead in the eyes again, like we were discussing matters of life and death.
"Bella, this is really important," she said in a low, serious voice. "What do you remember?"
I swallowed. "About what?"
I was going to need a more specific frame of reference.
The girl took a deep breath. And behind her, I saw the russet-haired boy start to look a bit green. Which was impressive, given how pale he already was.
"Let's start with our names," she suggested. Then she gestured to herself. "I'm Alice, does that ring a bell?"
Alice. Nope. No bells. But I would be sure to remember that now.
I shook my head.
At once, a murmur of malcontented whispers rippled through the pale strangers behind the spiky-haired girl. They clearly did not take this as good news.
Alice's face fell. "Anyone else's names?" she gestured broadly to the rest of the people present. And they all looked at me with expectant, and deeply worried faces.
I swallowed again. I felt bad for their concern. But that did not change the fact that they were perfect strangers to me. Gorgeous strangers. But strangers nonetheless.
As I looked each one of them over, scrutinizing them for any recognizable detail, I tried to force something out of my mouth. An apology. An explanation. Anything. But I couldn't. And my silence spoke volumes.
The youngest-looking one with the russet hair abruptly turned to look at Alice again, his expression devastated. And the words that flowed out of his mouth next, were so thick with anguish it physically hurt to hear them.
"She doesn't remember me?"
At his words, everyone looked incredulously at me. And I felt a sharp stab of guilt mixed with mounting confusion. Should I?
But while the russet-haired boy was having some kind of existential crisis or something, Alice just kept gently shaking her head, and saying over and over again. "I'm so sorry, Edward. I'm so sorry."
Edward. Hmm. I rolled the syllables around in my mind for a minute, trying to make sense of them. To maybe attach them to some allusive image, or event. But there was nothing to attach them to. The only images and events my mind contained were from the past thirty minutes or so. And no one had ever introduced themselves as Edward during that time.
Alice continued to rant nonsensically at Edward. "I swear I didn't see this coming. I couldn't see anything until we got that thing away from her… I…"
It seemed like she was trying to apologize. But her words were having absolutely no effect on Edward. While she tried to justify her lack of foresight, he continued to sink steadily deeper and deeper into despair. I watched it overtake his features with morbid fascination. It was liking watching a masterpiece slowly burn away to cinders. Horrifying. But also strangely beautiful at the same time.
"There isn't any possibility is there?" Edward huffed in a voice that was both aggravated and defeated. "That she'll remember anything?"
The friendliest blond male in the group took interest in the conversation suddenly after that. "Alice," he breathed coolly.
Alice turned to look at him, her expression unsettlingly grave. "Yes, Carlisle?" she asked, hesitantly.
Carlisle. I made sure to take note. That was three names down. Three to go.
"Is this what it was like for you?" he went on. "Is Bella…"
He seemed unwilling to finish that sentence. But everyone in the room seemed to understand what he was getting at anyway. Well, everyone that is, of course, besides me.
Alice nodded once—a clipped, jerky gesture.
But that was all it took. The rest of the strangers besides Edward—who seemed to already know whatever Alice was telling everyone—gasped in horrified shock. And the blonde girl, who was easily the most beautiful in the whole bunch, balled her pallid hands into tight little fists and mouthed the word no. Like she was particularly upset. Though still nowhere near as devastated as Edward. Looking at him right now was like peering into the event horizon of a black hole.
The burliest of the strangers only looked a little less confused than me, to my great relief. He decided it was his turn to speak.
"So wait, like Alice, Bella doesn't remember being human? And she won't ever get her memories back?"
Alice, looking guiltier than ever—though I couldn't fathom how this could ever be construed as her fault—nodded her head solemnly. "Not in any of the futures I can see, anyway," she admitted, shrugging weakly.
The burly stranger leaned back and cursed softly. "Damn."
But as he joined the group commiseration, some pieces finally began to click together in my head.
"Wait… you guys are saying I've lost memories?" I asked. "Like… I've got amnesia, or something?"
My voice trembled a bit because that was all too easy for me to believe. After all, a lot of information that logically needed to exist to lead up to this moment was missing.
Alice grimaced for real this time. "Sort of," she explained. "But amnesia is a human thing. And most people recover. This on the other hand…"
She gestured limply in my direction and trailed off.
And I remained confused, until I caught the sight of something reflective out of the corner of my eye. It was one of those beeping machines hooked up next to whatever I was laying on—a table? A bed? And there was a little patch of shiny chrome surrounding the monitor.
Reflected in that patch of chrome was a slice my own eerily pale skin. It was much paler than I remembered—and I could remember what I had looked like. And something else was new. I could had sworn that my eyes had always been brown. But the irises reflected on the surface of that machine were not brown.
Instead, they were a startling, alien, crimson.
I turned away abruptly in horror. Then clapped a hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming. Suddenly, it dawned on me what Alice was getting at.
My melodious voice cracked as I spoke the fateful words. "I'm not human anymore, am I?"
Alice shook her head gently. "No." The word left her mouth as barely more than a whisper.
Now the same horror that had been filling everyone else suddenly spread to me.
"Then… what exactly am I?" I glanced nervously at those red eyes in my reflection again. Then quickly shuddered and looked away. There was something feral about them. Wild. Untamed. Dangerous.
I didn't like it.
Not one bit.
Alice took a deep breath, like she was about to preface something lengthy, and I sat up to listen more attentively. "Bella," she began. "What exactly do you know about vampires?"
…
There was a lot to explain after that. Apparently, I had some misconceptions about what vampires were—mostly based on the fragmented, encyclopedic memories I still retained. Though those memories that were next-to-useless without any accompanying images. Something about fangs and coffins…
But after several hours or everyone pitching in, I had a pretty good idea of what I was now.
According to the six strangers a vampire was an immortal being with exceptional senses, speed, durability and strength. Which all sounded good enough. But there were a few downsides. I wouldn't be able to walk freely outside on sunny days without attracting notice—something about my skin having some kind of visible reaction. My teeth were razor-sharp now, and coated with a liquid they called "venom" which could be used to transform humans into vampires—and had been used to change me. And soon enough, I would start thirsting for human blood.
That last part hadn't kicked in yet—something I was infinitely grateful for. Well that, and the fact that my old friends—new friends?—assured me I wouldn't necessarily have to murder anyone. They were "vegetarians" and were more than willing to help me be one too.
But it was hard to tell if the other things had kicked in yet either.
The venom thing was easy enough to verify—my tongue could feel how slick my teeth were. And I did notice that I no longer had to breathe, and that my heart wasn't beating anymore—two distinctly non-human symptoms. Not to mention my reflexes did seem a bit faster than my body was used to.
But I couldn't tell if my sight, or hearing or smell was any better than it used to be. I simply didn't have any frame of reference to compare it to.
Surely there had always been eight colors in rainbows, and every individual wood-grain in the texture of the walls had always been so distinctly visible, right? I mean… I couldn't imagine it any other way… so…
But during the explanation, I also learned some other important bits of information. Like where I was. And everyone's names. Both of which were very helpful.
As it so happened, we were in a big fancy house just outside the tiny town of Forks, Washington—a city name that had absolutely no meaning to me. And there were actually nine vampires in this house. Well, eight and a half to be precise. But I wasn't allowed to meet the half, or her protector, until I proved that I wasn't dangerous around humans. Something I was told could take some time.
"You mean… I might not be able to see her for a whole year?" I asked, after the blonde boy with all the scary scars—whose name I now knew was Jasper—had spoke. After he had explained how long it usually took for the worst of the murderous rage to wear off.
"Maybe," Alice cautioned. "We don't know." She seemed adamant that we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here. "You might adjust quicker… but since you can't remember anything… well, that certainly won't help…"
I didn't like those odds. Nor what Alice said next.
"Besides you wouldn't want us to risk it. At least… you wouldn't have before all this…"
Alice gestured awkwardly to my form. Then everyone awkwardly shuffled their feet around on the carpet after that. And I took the opportunity to look at my hands—my strange, perfect, alabaster hands—and wonder what I had been like before all of this.
Who had I been before I lost my memories? Was I a nice person? Were these good people I had gotten myself involved with? Had I made the right decision in letting them change me into a vampire? Had I even made that decision? Or had they forced me into it?
There were still so many questions. And as the morning rolled on, and the six strangers each took turns trying to fill in as many of the blanks for me as possible, I grew even more certain with every passing hour, that it was only going to get more confusing from here.
Amnesia on its own was hard enough to deal with. Amnesia as a newly awoken vampire, I was slowly finding out was so much worse. But amnesia as a newly awoken vampire who had also apparently had some pretty significant close relationships with some other vampires prior to losing her memory…?
Well… that was a train-wreck for everyone.
The Cullens—I thought it was weird that almost all of them used that name, when none of them, except the hybrid I wasn't allowed to meet yet, were actually related—seemed nice enough. But each one took the revelation that I wasn't going to remember my human life a bit differently.
Alice, I gathered from the others, had gone through a similar thing when she'd been transformed. She seemed the most intimately aware of what things were going to be like for me going forward. Which made her the most empathetic about the whole thing. Although she did seem to still be dealing with some internalized guilt. Like she believed that my inability to remember anything before the burning in my veins was somehow her fault.
Jasper, on the other hand, was probably the most detached. He was concerned about this development, for sure. But he was more attentive to how Alice was reacting, than to how I was handling it. So, I assumed we hadn't really known each other all that closely. Which was fine by me. Less catching up for me to do.
Carlisle, the less scary of the two blond men, was just about as worried as Alice was. But since he'd never experienced anything like it himself, his interest in my current predicament was more scientific than empathetic. Like he was doctor searching for a cure, rather than a friend wanting to help me cross a treacherous bridge they had already crossed.
Emmett, the burliest of the Cullens, was seriously bummed. But he seemed to view this whole ordeal as another adventure.
"Once she's got herself under control, we can give her a tour of the house again. It'll be just like old times!" he'd gushed. "Maybe we can take her out for baseball again too! She's one of us now, so it'll be a lot more fun than just having her watch."
Rosalie, the gorgeous, statuesque blonde girl, was an interesting case. I also got the sense that we hadn't been exceptionally close, except maybe very recently. But she nonetheless took things a lot more seriously than Emmett or Jasper. She seemed extremely worried that her family had made the wrong choice.
"We should have never changed Bella into a vampire," she insisted, after I asked a question she found to be particularly damning. "What are we going to do about the baby?" she'd demanded. "Bella doesn't even remember who she is!"
"Well it's not like we had any other choice," Jasper retorted. "She was practically already dead when we removed it. If Edward had waited even another minute…"
He didn't have to finish that sentence for us to all understand where he was going with that. Even I, who had absolutely no recollection of anything before Edward's vampire venom was already burning in my veins, caught his meaning. Apparently, I'd been in some kind of life-threatening danger a few days ago, and had only been vampirized by Edward at the last minute to save my life.
I wasn't sure if I should feel grateful about that. It would have been a lot less complicated if I had just died. Living like this… with no real concrete knowledge about anything that had come before, and having to deal with everyone's sadness and pitying looks wasn't exactly making an eternity in the Cullen household look like a dream. But I wasn't going to give up just yet.
Perhaps in time, I would adjust.
Alice, for her part, seemed to be doing alright, despite having began her immortal life in a similar fashion. And that fact did give me a tiny shred of hope.
Though, that hope was almost completely dashed apart whenever I looked at Edward. He seemed to taking this the hardest. Not only did he seem to be listening to everything Rosalie was saying about his decision to turn me being a bad idea—which was preposterous—but he seemed devastated about this whole situation in a much more personal way. Like my loss of memories was the same as the loss of his reason for living.
I took a deep breath and tried to not to sigh.
Great. This is just great.
"…Well maybe if you'd just done CPR a little longer…" Rosalie was counterarguing after the Cullens had finished the bulk of their explanations to me.
She was really laying into Edward with a viciousness that put me instinctively on edge. Angry vampires were scary. Even if I was one too now. That was just a fact.
"Her spine was broken, Rosalie," Carlisle reminded her sternly, gesturing for her to calm down. "If we were very lucky, she would have been paralyzed from the waist down. But that's assuming she would have survived the blood loss, and the trauma to her internal organs."
"Bella's tough," Rosalie asserted. Though it didn't fully feel like a compliment. More like wishful thinking. "Alice, what do you think?" she asked, deferring to her sister's expertise.
Alice was peering at something in the distance that only she could see when Rosalie's words brought her sharply back to reality. She shook her head adamantly. "She wouldn't have made it."
Rosalie snapped her lips together. This clearly wasn't the answer she'd been looking for. But, while I had no clue what made Alice so certain, Rosalie decided not to push her luck any further.
"Rosalie," Jasper began in patient tone, "Can't you just be glad that Bella gets to be a mother at all? Even if she'd going to need a lot of our help in order to do that?"
I froze as Jasper's words sunk in. "Wait… I'm a mother?" I blurted out.
Things just kept getting weirder and weirder.
…
It took the rest of the day and well into the evening to explain the whole mess that was Renesmee. How Edward a I had fallen in love while I was still human. How we'd made the foolhardy decision to have unprotected sex on our honeymoon—something everyone in the Cullen family had assured me they had no reason to believe would result in pregnancy. Even though that seemed like a thoroughly obvious outcome to me. How I'd begged to keep our baby even in spite of mounting evidence that it was a monster hybrid causing me severe bodily harm, and would, in all likelihood, kill me as it tried to escape my womb. How I'd managed to just barely survive until my "delivery", barely more than skin and bones, with the help of a little extra O-positive Carlisle had lying around the house. And how after the hybrid was forcibly extracted from my body—a very violent affair—I had nearly died. And was only sitting here thanks to Edward's timely intervention.
And "mess" was an apt word to explain it. Because it all seemed highly illogical to me. I couldn't remember the person I'd been before the venom had changed me. But the person I was now was horrified at the thought of suffering through such a nightmarish pregnancy. And completely baffled by how adamant everyone insisted I'd been about going through with something so likely to simply kill us both.
After expressing my confusion about not taking up Carlisle on his offer to try and abort the malignant fetus, Rosalie tried to explain it to me. She said that because the baby was Edward's baby, I had loved it instantly, just like I'd loved him. And I couldn't stand the thought of destroying it.
But in the absence of any of those feelings in my heart right now, that idea just sounded like mushy nonsense to me.
Not to mention Renesmee was not a name. It was, at best, a mouthful of unpronounceable sap. And I would definitely have to see about convincing everyone to change it sometime in the near future. If my daughter did in fact exist, and this wasn't some elaborate prank, I would like to be able to refer to her without cringing for the rest of eternity.
Unfortunately, when I tried to delicately broach the topic, my daughter's father seemed pretty attached to the moniker. And I got the sense that he wouldn't be taking any drastic changes like that very well. At least, not if the way he was reacting to my memory loss was any indication of how much he hated change in general.
But maybe I would warm up to it. Who knew?
Maybe as I tried to reconcile the current me with the old me—something Alice was already drafting up a plan with Carlisle about—I would come to understand that choice better. Maybe in six months or a year the name Renesmee wouldn't sound so silly to me. Maybe I'd even like it.
It was a nice thought. But as I watched Alice and Carlisle begin to draw out their plans on a large white board on wheels that Emmett had pushed into the room a few seconds earlier, I couldn't help but feel a new, creeping sense of dread sneaking up on me. A dread that only grew more intense with each bright red arrow, line or circle they drew on the board. And a dread that refused to be dismissed no matter how hard I tried to drown it out with the noisy squeaking of Alice and Carlisle's Expo markers.
What if I can't connect my old self and my new self? What if we try to revive the old Bella and it just doesn't work?
Now that was a scary thought.
But as if my consciousness was trying to win an award for the scariest thought, the next one that popped into my head was even worse.
What if I don't want to be the old Bella? What if I want to be someone else?
I looked down at my hands again, horrified that such an unthinkable thing had even crossed my mind. Didn't I owe it to these nice people to at least try to become the woman they had befriended and/or fallen in love with again? And shouldn't I trust myself enough to believe that I would want the life old me had chosen—an eternity with Edward—to try and recapture it again?
Perhaps I should. The huge diamond weighing down my left hand seemed to point in that direction. And perhaps I would have been more inclined to go that direction if old Bella had seemed like even a half-way desirable person to be. But from what little I knew about her, I wasn't sure about that.
It seemed old Bella had made some pretty reckless decisions. Unprotected sex? Carrying a dangerous half-vampire baby to term even though such a thing had never been done before and might pose a threat to everyone? Falling in love with a vampire while I was still a vulnerable human?
Did old Bella have a death wish?
Or had she simply been so caught up in her emotions that she'd forgotten to think logically?
I, the new, vampire-amnesiac Bella wasn't so sure. But neither prospect seemed very appealing.
And as the vibrant autumn colors of the sunset visible from the room's only window slowly gave way to the dark blues and blacks of night, I began to put into place a plan of my own. I would go along with Alice and Carlisle's "rehabilitation efforts" for now. But I wasn't going to let anyone rush me into anything I wasn't comfortable with. And if at any point I decided I wanted to let my forgotten past be forgotten and strike it out on my own, then the Cullens would just have to learn to live with that.
It wasn't like they could hold me against my will, anyway. I was a newborn vampire. So, at least for a few more months, I was stronger than them. Faster than them too.
My lips turned up at the corners at the thought of them trying to lock me up under these new conditions. I'd like to watch them try.
"Is something funny, Bella?" Alice asked, turning away from her board full of incomprehensible red scribbles for the first time in several hours to scrutinize my odd expression.
I composed myself instantly—schooling that devious smirk back into a straight face—and gave Alice my most innocent smile. "Oh, it was nothing," I lied casually.
Alice, to my immense disappointment absolutely did not look convinced. In fact, she even frowned at me. But for whatever reason, she decided to let it go, and summarily turned back to board to keep drafting my recovery plan with Carlisle.
Alice drew another bright red circle in the middle of the board. Then Carlisle added a few jots of text at the end of one of her smudgy sentences. I looked up, thinking that I should start trying to piece together whatever it was the pair had in store for me, so I could prepare myself. But before I could make any sense of the maze of shapes and lines that looked more like an alien crop circle than any coherent strategy, I felt it.
A sudden spike of heat flaring up in my throat. And the sudden sensation of being completely parched.
Uh oh.
The pain wasn't anywhere near as bad as the venom burning in my veins had been. But it was a lot more concentrated. And this time my oh-so-helpful instincts decided that I needed visual aids.
A series of disjointed images flashed across my mind's eye in rapid succession. A flicker of perfectly white, razor-sharp teeth dripping with venom. A flash of unmarred human skin. A movement so fast everything was blurred. And a sudden splash of red.
I felt my own mouth watering in response. And before I had even completely finished the thought, I was suddenly on my feet beside the table the Cullens had make-shifted into a hospital bed for me. And sniffing the air, searching for blood.
As soon as my bare feet hit the hardwood floor, Alice stopped dead. Her Expo marker came to a squeaky stop on the board, leaving the red line she was drawing unfinished. Then she wheeled around to face me, her golden eyes widening in terror.
"Bella, don't!" she implored.
I still wasn't sure why she always seemed to have the fastest reaction times out of everyone else. Or why she seemed to be so sure that my next course of action was going to be a bad one when I hadn't said anything out loud. Perhaps there was some way she could predict these sorts of things? Perhaps there was more to this vampire thing than the Cullens had let on?
Whatever the case was, it didn't matter in that moment.
All that mattered was alleviating the thirst that was burning my throat.
So without so much as another word, I made a beeline for the window. Crashed through the glass. And plummeted from the second story toward the dark grass below, ready to being the hunt.