Hey guys my second fic. This is the background story on Emmett. Hope you enjoy this long one shot!
Emmett's Story
I had been a vampire for quite some time now but still it amazed me how much there was to do and to know. Luckily Renesmee did sometimes keep Edward and I preoccupied. We found out that although Renesmee was progressing much quicker than a normal child, it seemed that she did still have her weaknesses. For one, she was much too easily distracted although who could blame her? She lived in a house with eight grown vampires who did not sleep; no wonder there was always enough going on around her. Another reason for the distraction was that Renesmee was being home schooled. Due to her advanced growth she could not go to school as she still seemed to change every month. Once she reached the age of seventeen, both physically and mentally she would be able to join us in our charades. But until that time, Renesmee had to make do with us Cullens, the wolves and their imprints. I always wondered whether the lack of playmates would be a problem but no one else really shared my concern. When we had a "family dinner" with Renesmee staying over at Jake's place, I had voiced my concern.
"Guys, do you maybe think that Renesmee might be missing something?"
"Missing something? Like what?" Alice asked sounding a bit miffed since everyone knew we all, and especially Alice, did our best to give Renesmee everything she wanted and needed.
"Well, I was wondering..." I hesitated, thinking to myself if this was really important enough to bring it up but I wanted some feedback so I pushed on. "If maybe you guys think that Renesmee is missing out on a normal childhood, not only because of us but also because she can't really make any friends since she doesn't really have a stable age?"
"Ow honey, I'm sure Renesmee isn't missing out on anything. I know playing with older people wouldn't seem like fun with your memories of being a child but Renesmee is simply even older in mind than she looks really," Esme said soothingly.
"Yeah, I'll bet that Renesmee is perfectly happy with the way things are right now." Jasper commented, and a wave of serenity came over me. I flashed Jasper an appreciative smile and decided not to worry about it for the time being. At least it was my intention not to worry until I heard something else.
"It's not as if she is really missing anything anyway by not having friends. If you ask me, she's better off without them."
It completely took me off guard. I turned slowly to see who had said it, although I knew that I couldn't have been mistaken, not me, not with my ability to hear even the slightest nuance or the hint of one. But still my mind told me that this was wrong, I had heard wrong because surely, surely it couldn't have been Emmett who had said such an uncharacteristic thing. Emmett, who always seemed to happy, at ease with everything that happened, simply could not speak of something with such true malice and, I recognised it a moment after the first shade, pain. Such pain that it made me want to strike whoever had done this to my favourite brother. Such pain that it made me want to wrap my arms around Emmett so tightly and closely as to protect him from feeling this way.
But I was immobilised. The shock of this event rendered me useless and it reminded me of when I was still a human and I used to marvel at the way Edward would sit perfectly still during such an occasion. Although logically I knew that my mind, especially since its "renovation", could comprehend exactly what was being said, I felt like my brain power had been reduced. Somehow the only thing that ran through my mind at that point was "I don't understand." I was still staring disbelievingly at Emmett when I felt Edward's hand rest on my shoulder. For the first time since I had become a vampire, I had not even noticed him walk up behind me. He then said, so softly that I knew it was meant only for me to hear, "This is not a story you should hear right now, especially not if Emmett isn't ready to tell it or under control enough to do so. Come, love, do not push him." And I never meant to so I nodded my head infinitesimally while taking a step back. But in my mind I vowed to find out what had caused this bitterness in my brother and try to help him deal with it, one way or another.
Later when we were back at the house there was a large commotion going on in the hall. When I went to go check it out, I saw that it was Jacob, Embry and Quil who seemed to be messing around as they usually did. It fleetingly reminded me of the times when I was down in La Push with Jacob during my dark ages. It amazed me that they still acted like sixteen year olds when they were all nineteen now. Wow nineteen already, I thought to myself. How time flies. However, although many things were in my mind I could not forget anything, and this meant also not the scene with Emmett. But I had no idea of how I should deal with it or him. My curiosity was aroused and it needed to be satisfied. As I stood there, watching the wolves and mulling over my plan or lack thereof, Emmett walked by and as soon as he saw the wolves blocking the way to his room he scowled and turn back to head in the direction that would take him to his room the long way around. It wasn't unusual for one of the younger Cullens to get annoyed at the wolves for taking up so much space; they weren't accustomed yet to their unceasing presence. But this mostly resulted in one of my vampire siblings simply going in the direction they wanted. Their boulder-like bodies couldn't be stopped by hitting into one of the wolves after all. Emmett for one even relished in striding through the wolves on purpose when they were busy with some game or other. It was truly out of fashion for Emmett to actually turn back and find another way to his destination, this sort of behaviour was reserved for the more mature vampires in the house, Carlisle, Esme and myself.
I was seriously getting weirded out by Emmett's behaviour and I was starting to notice a connection but I didn't understand what the underlying problem really was, yet. I decided to spend my time carefully observing Emmett for the time being, luckily that was easier now that I had gotten a hang of all my vampire abilities. I could easily sense where Emmett was by pushing my shield away from me until it reached him and his own light burned brightly under my cover. As I did this one afternoon a few weeks after the hunting trip, I couldn't help wishing that I could help him with his memories by using my ability but my gift protects the mind from outside invasions, not from what is already inside the mind.
When I found Emmett, he was with Jasper in the living room. The large TV screen was in multiple screen mode so that they could watch all four major games going on at that moment. One football, one soccer, one baseball and one basketball game was playing and they seemed to have just tuned in. I heard them discussing things like batting percentages, leg use and hoop shots. I decided to listen to their conversation rather than disturb them with my presence.
"So Jazzy, think you're knowledgeable enough to win these bets for a change?"
"You bet ya, Emmett, you aren't always gonna win you know!"
"Ha, fat chance you have of beating me. You know I don't do losing. It doesn't suit me,"
Emmett replied with a smirk on his face. He was right; it was rare when Emmett lost a bet. He was always so exultant when he won one, it made me wonder. What had happened to Emmett before I knew him that made him so eager to make but also especially win bets? Not knowing was infuriating me but I still didn't have the courage to come out and ask Emmett head on. So much for not being afraid of anything once I was indestructible. But this also seemed like something a bit more delicate, something that you couldn't just blurt out at any moment.
"Argh," I said to myself. "How frustrating. I just wanna know already."
I sauntered to the kitchen where I found Esme, Alice and Rosalie crowded around the kitchen top that was full with all kinds of ingredients. I knew that they loved having the wolves around as well as Renesmee so that they had something to take care of. The wolves were almost more here than they were at home, you know how it is with teenagers, can't wait to get out of the house but cooking? No thank you. Not that the girls minded, actually getting to cook and see the satisfaction on the wolves' faces after the meal was enough for them. They finally got their wish to be mothers, sort of. Of course it wasn't exactly the same but it worked for them, especially for Alice and Rosalie since Esme already had the six of us to worry about.
I sat down on one of the bar stools they had standing in the kitchen around the cooking island and heaved a sigh. Esme turned to look at me, worried as usual.
"What's wrong Bella honey?" She said softly.
"I, I have this thing, that I want to do... but I don't know how to do it."
"Jeez, Bella, do we have to guess or something? We can't really help you unless you tell us what is going on." Alice replied.
"Well, have you guys noticed that Emmett seems, I don't know, out of sorts lately? Like not himself?"
"We do all have that from time to time Bella. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about," Esme said.
But I was not convinced, and as I looked at Rosalie studiously cutting the potatoes into wedges I was sure that there was more going on. I could wait though, for Rosalie, to see what it was that she knew and see if she could give me information or otherwise help me get it from Emmett himself.
The opportunity to do so came sooner than I had expected. After the wolves had eaten, I saw Rosalie wander quietly and alone towards the backdoor of the house, out towards the garden. I waited for an eighteenth of a second and then followed her out there. She was leaning against a tree just at the edge of the forest. When I reached her she turned to me and said "Follow me, we should go deeper into the forest." I nodded my head and in a flash we were running through the forest until we were so deep inside it, the noon sun could hardly squeeze its powerful rays through the canopies of the topiary. Rosalie slowly turned to me and said softly "I am going to take you somewhere Bella. We will have to run as fast as we can in order to make it back home on time. Are you ready?" I was still stunned by her actions and so all I could manage was another nod. A faint smile graced her face and then Rosalie was running again only much faster than she had been running before. I thought to myself that I was lucky that it wasn't Edward I was following, my strength had waned and I could no longer keep up with Edward easily but Rosalie posed no trouble.
We made it to the place that seemed to be our destination after a few hours of running. When Rosalie finally stopped moving, I decided to break the silence that had enveloped us during our run.
"Rose, where are we?"
"This is the largest forest in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Did you know that Bella?"
"No," I replied, confused and wondering where this was going.
"We used to live here. Carlisle, Esme, Edward and I that is. We will never live here again. It's a pity really; this place is one of the few perfects spots for us in the US. Cloudy, full of forest which is full of game. It's got a very rich climate here you know."
"Really? Then it is a shame we can't come back. I would have liked to live here. It sounds wonderful. But why Rose? Why can't we live here anymore?" I asked, not understanding anymore than when we first started our journey.
"Because Bella, this is the exact spot where I found Emmett in 1935. When he was fighting off a bear, fighting for his life. I'm sure you can imagine that it is hard for him to come back here. I only went back to Rochester once to deal with those despicable vermin and still, even with my revenge, I would not gladly go back there. Emmett couldn't even get revenge. He did prey on a bear during his first hunt but who's to say that he got the right one? Anyway, the reason I wanted to show you this was because I thought maybe you would understand that you are the only one with the fairy tale ending. No one else really chose this. And the reason Emmett is acting so strangely is," she took a deep breath as if to steady herself. "Is because this is the 80th anniversary of his beginning of his new life. And he has never had to deal with anyone other than our family before. The camaraderie between the wolves is too much for him right now."
"But I still don't understand. I mean, it's terrible of course that this is his 80th anniversary but why is he taking it so much harder now than before? It doesn't make sense to me."
"It will make sense, once you hear the full story. But I'm afraid that is for Emmett to tell you and not me."
"Yes, I understand that."
"Now come, it's time to go back home. Renesmee will be wondering where we've been."
"Alright then. Let's go." And we raced back to Forks and all the while my mind tried to come up with some kind of plan, some course of action that would allow me to be alone with Emmett to try and find out what was bugging him.
This was harder to think of than I had anticipated. I mean, how do you create the perfect situation to find out how someone's life ended? This was a delicate thing. I couldn't just walk up to him and say "So Emmett, how did you do it?" Like Rosalie said, I'm the only one with the fairy tale ending, I'm the only one who could really answer this question. How did I do it? I got pregnant with the child of my vampire husband. I highly doubted that Emmett had any real reason to become a vampire, it happened by accident like with all the rest of the Cullens. I just couldn't figure out a way to find out.
That night Edward and I were in the cottage, with Renesmee sleeping soundly in her room. I decided to bring it up now again, maybe Edward could give me some pointers.
"Edward, this whole thing with Emmett is really bothering me. I hate to see him like this, it just... just, this isn't my Emmett, the one I've lived with for the past few years. I want to help him Edward but I also want to know."
"Honey, this is simply the one thing that Emmett has trouble sharing. But it wouldn't be fair for me to tell you his story."
"I know," I replied and I really did. Edward heard so much more than what people meant to say, he felt it was betraying their confidences to tell their stories since he's afraid he might slip up.
"Let's go back to the house alright? Renesmee is out like a light anyway, she'll only be awake in the morning again," Edward suggested.
"Sure, come on, I'll race you," I said while I was already running towards the big house. I heard him laugh behind me but I didn't look back. I knew that he would really beat me then. I set my sights on the porch doors and pushed myself to reach them. I sense Edward behind me and moved myself in front of him on purpose. This dance continued until we were almost at the porch doors and then I suddenly stopped. I realised that we were almost going to wreck the doors so I braced myself for the crash with Edward.
"Ooph, hey what's going on?" Edward asked after our collision.
"I just figured Esme probably doesn't want her doors ruined."
"Aah, good point," he said and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "My smart little wifey."
"Don't you start with me Edward Cullen!" I hated it when he said those sorts of things. Emmett's booming laugh came from the living room and in no time he was standing in the doorway.
"Is Edward picking on you again, Bella? What did you do, trip?" He snorted.
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah right Emmett, as if." I decided to take a shot at getting Emmett alone with me so I announced to everyone; "Hey, does anyone want to join me? I'm gonna go hunting now since Renesmee is asleep." We found out that if Renesmee had a full night's sleep, she could stay awake much longer than a usual human so she didn't have to sleep as often now that she was older.
"Sure, I wanted to go sometime soon anyway," Emmett replied. Alice cut Jasper off before he could answer my question, her skill is quite handy at times. She could see what I was trying to achieve and I was sure that she would clue Jasper in as soon as Emmett and I would be out of hearing range.
"Alrighty then. Any preferences where you want to go?" I asked Emmett.
"We could go to the forest area around Seattle. That shouldn't take us too long to get there."
"Sounds fine by me." I wondered why he wanted to go there specifically but I was sure I would find out soon enough.
We had run to Seattle in comfortable silence, Emmett leading the way as he had been here before and knew where the forest exactly was.
"So Emmett, you came with this place quite quickly. How come?"
"You picked up on that, did you? Well I heard on the news that there was a grizzly problem here so I thought, we should do what we can to help them with it."
I snickered at him, "Such a philanthropist." Emmett smiled at my comment and then told me that we were almost there.
We found a pair of grizzlies soon enough and I hung back a bit to watch Emmett take care of the larger male grizzly. He seemed to play around with the animal, roaring and growling at it to antagonize it. I wondered why he wanted them to be so angry before he actually drank their blood. I saw the other smaller bear approaching and so I decided to feed as well.
Once I had drained my bear, I walked to the little creek to clean my face a bit. The bear had been shedding hairs that stuck to the small trickle of blood that ran down my chin. After this, I sat down at the edge of the bank to watch the sun setting. Emmett sat down next to me, with no need to wash. As I glanced behind him, I saw the bear. It wasn't only drained, it looked mangled.
"Emmett, do you really have to wrestle the bear each time?"
"Yes," he replied in a short manner. I glanced at him and I saw the same expression on his face as he had had weeks ago during the hunting trip. I grasped his hand in mine and turned slightly towards him.
"I don't get it Emmett. I'm confused. Can I help you with anything? You seem so unhappy these past few weeks."
Emmett gave me a shrewd look. "Bella what do you know about this time?"
"This time?" I asked, still confused.
"Yeah, this time, this time right now."
"Well, Rosalie did tell me something." He looked at me with his eyebrows raised, urging me to say it.
"She said it was your 80th anniversary as a vampire. She showed me the spot where... where you were attacked."
"I wasn't attacked, Bella. I wish, then I could have blamed someone else."
"What do you mean?"
"Back in 1935, when I was twenty years old, I came back home from college to spend some time with my family and old friends in Gatlinburg, in Tennessee. We were hanging out and quickly fell back into our old routine. You see Bella, my "addiction"" he said the word while quoting the air "to betting came from the time when we were all around the age of twelve and we would dare or bet each other to do dangerous things. I was easily the largest guy in the group, you see, and so I often got the ones that needed heavy lifting or muscle.
Back then, there were even more bears around the entire continental US. I was in the wrestling team of my college and in the year that I had been participating I had never lost a single match. My friends thought it would be fun to see me wrestle something that would actually be a challenge, so we went to the woods after they had dared me to wrestle the first animal that we would see." Emmett paused here. I could tell that the horror of the story was not far off now.
"We had walked a way into the forest when we heard the cracking of twigs. We reckoned it was an animal of some size due to the loudness of the cracks. We decided to track it. When we found the bear it was trying to fish out fish from a small stream in the forest. I thought to myself I would just roar a bit like some idiot and then hightail it out of there before the bear actually noticed me and come with some lame excuse of how it didn't react. As you can tell, that didn't go as planned.
I walked out and I was still about fifty feet from the bear when I started to roar. As I had expected, the bear hardly paid any attention to me. I turned to smile at my friends, I made some offhand comment about the animal being deaf and then I turned around again. I decided to roar one more time, it didn't matter, the animal hardly reacted anyway. But this time, when I roared, so did my friends. It sounded much more impressive when the five of us did it than when it was just me on my own. The bear turned around, finally noticing the noise. It seemed to look past me and so when it ducked its head, I thought I was safe. I turned again, walking to my friends when I saw their terrified faces. Looking over my shoulder I saw the bear rising on its hind legs and the sight of the bear scared the hell out of me. I started to run without looking where I was going and so I tripped over the log my friends had been sitting behind. When I looked forward, they had already gone. They must have thought that I was just behind them, I was the fastest one and so they had no reason to think that I could still be lying there. My leg was caught behind the log and the force of my fall broke the bone.
I knew at that moment that my end had come. And for what? For some stupid bet that my friends forced me to do, friends that didn't even help me get away or even wait to see if I was still with them. The last thing that went through my head at that moment was "Let it be quick and hopefully painless." Of course I was not so lucky. Bears tend to eat slowly, one bite at a time. But first they tender up the meat by beating it. I was almost losing consciousness when I opened my eyes to have one last look at the sky and the sun. That was when I heard a different growl. Something had come, something even more menacing than the bear it seemed since the bear soon left me alone. But when I looked around me I saw nothing, no animal. That is until she walked out of the forest. The sun reflected off of her skin and hair. She seemed to glow and I knew in an instant what she was and where I must therefore be. My last human memory is of seeing an angel and thinking that I must be heaven for where else could someone so prefect exist."
He paused, probably mulling over what he would say next. "The next thing I knew I felt a burning in my throat and when I opened my eyes I saw the angel again. Except she was more beautiful than I remembered. She smiled at me and said "I am Rosalie. You're safe now." And I knew it was true. I was safe."
A short silence descended upon us as I took in the story. "Oh Emmett. I'm so sorry. It sounds terrible, the pain you must have been in."
"The pain the bear inflicted upon me was nothing Bella. Do you know why?"
I shook my head. I couldn't think of anything that could be worse, the transformation could only have been fractionally worse the way Emmett described it.
"The pain that my friends inflicted upon me was a thousand times worse. They left me, just left me there. They didn't even call out to warn me. Nothing. Some friends huh? No, I'd choose family over friends in a heartbeat."
"I understand now Emmett. Thank you for sharing your story with me. But you have to know that not everyone would react the way your friends did. Look at our history. The wolves are our friends, they've stood by us. You can trust them Emmett. You can have friends, friends you can rely on."
"Yes, I've come to see that now. It's just hard when I'm reminded of it so vividly. No matter how I try, I cannot not notice that it was eighty years ago that I lost my life due to a bet my friends forced on me."
"I've been wondering Emmett... If a bet robbed you of your life, why do you still do it so much?"
"I lost once Bella, the largest one I could have lost. I am not going to lose any more."
I nodded, it made sense. I was happy that I knew what was going on with my favourite brother although I was sad that his story existed due to his friends. Emmett stood up and offered me his hand.
"Ready to go back, lil sis?"
"Yeah I am." I bit on my lip. Would Emmett want to return to the house which would still be full of frolicking werewolves?
"Don't worry Bella, I'll be fine with the wolves there. I've come to see that they're family now too. They belong there."
I smiled. "Emmett,"
"What?"
I wanted to say something to encourage him but it wouldn't have sounded right coming from me. I just grinned and said "Last one home is a weak vampire" and sped off towards our house. I was followed by Emmett's booming laugh and I was happy my favourite brother was back to being himself again. I couldn't really say normal when talking about Emmett now could I?