Disclaimer: -sigh- I don't own Twilight, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and any plots I might've gotten from it).
The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness was that whatever I was laying on was very cold. I moaned a shook my head very slightly, before blearily opening my eyes. I was on the ground of the forest again, at the very beginning of the path. I could see my house from here. Groaning, I pushed myself up into a sitting position slowly. The demon wasn't here anymore, that I could see too. I looked down at my arm, frowning. There was a hole in my clothes, but no puncture wound. I wondered if I didn't just make up the whole thing. Maybe my shirt got snagged on a branch and I fell and got knocked unconscious.
But I couldn't truly believe that because the asylum...it felt so real. I couldn't believe that it wasn't. All the smells and the sounds, which was mostly silent, but a very loud, pressing silence. And the very slow padding down the hall of the other patients, faces straight forward and unseeing with their caretakers monitoring them, which was all seen through a wired glass screen in my door.
I got to my feet, a bit unsteadily, and made my way back to the house, trying to make sense of what had happened.
Charlie got home around eight, while I was making spaghetti. I was still a little confused, a little out of it, so I didn't want to make anything extravagant. I was standing at the stove, staring at the spaghetti in the pot without really seeing it, while I slowly stirred with a fork. Round and round and round...
"Bells?" I heard Charlie call through my daze from the front door as it opened.
"Uh, in here," I called softly, shaking my head and trying to come back into reality. "Dinner will be ready soon," I said as Charlie came into the kitchen.
"Sounds good Bells," he said smiling, "And will Edward be joining us?"
"I think so..." I replied dazedly.
"Hey, are you okay?" Charlie asked, frowning with concern, just as a knocking came from the door.
I nodded vaguely in his direction as I crossed the kitchen and made my way to the front door. I really needed to talk to Edward about what had happened, but it would have to be later. I opened the door to his breathtaking beauty, and now butterscotch colored eyes, which never failed to amaze me, even in my distant state. He smiled at me from under the orange porch light glow, and took my hand as he stepped in and shut the door.
"And how was your day love?" he asked softly, as he hugged me, my face pressing into his chest and inhaling his sweet scent. This helped me snap out of my reverie a little bit. I frowned.
"I need to talk to you later," I told him quietly.
He held my shoulders and pulled me back a little bit to look at my face, smile gone now because of the tone in my voice, with his perfect marble forehead creased from his furrowed brow. "Why? What's wrong?"
"Later..." I said distractedly, looking back toward the kitchen where Charlie was waiting for us. We walked back and while Edward went to sit across from Charlie, I went back to stir the pasta. I wasn't sure, it could've been my imagination, but I thought I felt a slight pounding in my head. This wouldn't be surprising, considering all the confusion and violence of the day, but somehow I didn't really think it was just the average headache. I went back to moving sluggishly, picking up the fork and just stirring it with what I was sure was a very vacant expression.
"Bella? Bella!" I heard from Charlie behind me and I went to turn.
But as I did, I was no longer in the kitchen. I had turned around back to a white room filled with doctors and counters with vials and needles and prescription bottles. And there was a man sitting at one of the metal counters, with all kinds of medications and needles and medical utensils in front of him.
The man looked exactly like Phil, strangely, except he was wearing a long white clinical coat with an ID badge and a few pens. He smiled as he said to me, "Come on. It's time for your drugs," and he reached over the counter to grab a bottle. My breathing started escalating, because I hated taking my drugs.
But then reality switched over again, and I was still standing at the stove, staring at a very concerned Charlie, and an even more concerned Edward, who's eyes were anxious.
"What!?" I exclaimed, my voice louder than it had gotten all day; a near yelp.
Charlie frowned even more as he repeated, "I said, if I didn't know any better I'd think you were on drugs!"
"O - Okay...good," I muttered, feeling more disoriented than ever as I stared at the floor around me, shaking my head slightly side to side, trying to clear it of this recent reality change.
Charlie just shook his head, and, with one more worried glance shot at me, went back to looking at the table. Edward, however, continued to look at me intensely.
I walked over to the cabinets to get out some plates, and Edward got up to come and help me. "What," he demanded when he was close enough to my ear so Charlie couldn't hear, as he took two plates from the cabinet and set them down on the counter, "Is going on?"
"I...I don't know," I said lowly, "Later."
"Later," Edward near growled, "Had better come soon."
Edward dished out some pasta (which was rather overcooked) for Charlie and I, and we started eating. Well, Charlie started eating while staring intently at me, while I mostly just pushed it around on my plate, waiting for Charlie to finish so Edward could "leave" and I could "go to bed". Edward started making small talk with Charlie to distract him from me and make him eat faster. From the small part of me that was actually paying some attention to my surroundings, I heard the underlying impatience in Edward's voice, which was very well concealed, though I knew him too well to not catch it.
When Charlie was finally done, he informed me he'd be watching TV. I wasn't paying attention until he mentioned Renee. "And remember Bella, you're going to have to tell Renee about your wedding sooner or later. If I were you, I'd do it sooner."
I glanced up in time to catch a look on his face that was set in a grim mask, imagining the horrors that my task would no doubt ensue. Charlie had been surprisingly good about the whole thing. A bit disapproving sure, but fairly amiable. Much more so than Renee would be. My head started to pound again at the thought, and I looked back down to the table.
"My head hurts," I said, standing up suddenly, the most abrupt move I'd made all night which caused Charlie to jump slightly; almost imperceptibly. "I'm going to go to bed. See you tomorrow Edward," I mumbled, turning to him as he kissed my forehead after repeating the same thing to me. But as Charlie meandered on to the living room he whispered, "I'll be waiting," before making the show of walking out the front door.
I walked up the stairs with my muddled thoughts quickly, really needing to tell Edward about the demon. I didn't know what was going on, but that asylum was too real for comfort.
I walked into my room to see Edward sitting on my bed. He stood up immediately to grab my hand and pull me down and into his lap. "What's going on?" he asked, brushing a hand through my hair.
"I...I don't know," I said. "Today I was just...I just went a little way up the path in the woods. And then this thing, this demon I guess-"
"Woah, wait!" Edward said, pulling back to look at me. "What do you mean demon?"
"It was a demon. That's what I'd call it. It was all waxy looking, with these big black glistening eyes, and we got into this fight-"
"You fought it!?" Edward said, a bit too loud. I shushed him, and he frowned at me, concern lacing through his eyes.
"Yes, I fought it," I whispered, "And I was doing really well, until this little poker thing came out of it's middle knuckle and stabbed me in my right arm."
Immediately, Edward grabbed my right arm and went to look at it. His eyes zeroed in on the puncture in my clothes, but there was no wound to see.
"It's no use," I said, "When I woke up it, and the demon, was gone."
"Wait, what do you mean when you woke up?"
I breathed in and let out a big breath of air and look intently at the slight pattern of the cotton in his cream colored shirt. "Well...that's the thing. The part that's worse than the demon."
"Worse than a demon?" Edward asked flatly.
I ignored him as I continued. "When the poker thing stabbed me...I...I guess it injected something into my system. Because as soon as it stuck me, I was...I wasn't here anymore. I was...somewhere else. I know it had to have been a delusion, but it couldn't be. It was so real," I whispered, and I could feel the tortured expression on my face as I finished and looked up into Edward's eyes.
He looked back at me earnestly. "Where were you?" he asked me quietly.
I didn't answer immediately. My eyes went back to tracing the pattern in his shirt. Edward touched my shoulder and shook it lightly. "Bella, honey? Where were you? Do you know?" he asked me anxiously.
I took a deep breath, before looking back into his eyes with my troubled ones. "An asylum," I whispered, fear coating my voice.
Edward's face darkened and he took in a big breath. "Okay," he said, "Okay. Get some sleep, and tomorrow we'll go see Carlisle about this demon and what it's done to you. I think I've heard him talking about other dark things that walk this earth before. Maybe he'll know what this is."
I let in a shaky breath. "Okay then. Tomorrow we'll as-- ahhh!" I cried softly, grabbing my head as I doubled over and fell to the floor.
"Bella!?" Edward asked anxiously, but his voice quickly faded into someone elses.
"Bella? Bella can you hear me?"
I looked up, scared and confused, to stare at this newer, calmer voice. I was back in the hospital, in my loose grayish-white clinic garb, kneeling in the corner of my white room. The speaker was a black doctor, complete with the long white coat, sitting on a low stool close to me.
My breathing came closer and closer to hyperventilating as I looked around me, dazed again. No, no, I didn't want him to speak to me. I wanted the doctor to go away. I didn't want to be here, and I was confused as to how I came to be.
With my breathing quick, I asked the doctor shakily, while looking at the floor in confusion, "Wha - What is this?"
"Do you know where you are Bella?" asked the black doctor in a low, kind, calm voice.
I stared at him, completely bewildered, but in a frightened way. "F - Forks," I whispered. "My home."
"No Bella. None of that's real, none of it," said the doctor gently, but in a way that sounded like he repeated it often. "Your in a mental institution. You've been with us now for nearly two years Bella. Do you remember?"
I looked up at him slowly, in horror. No, no, I'd been living in Forks for nearly two years.
My head spun as I entered my room at Charlie's house again. "Bella?" I heard Edward ask me anxiously again. He reached out a hand toward me and -
Suddenly it wasn't his hand. I was back in the asylum, and it was the black doctor reaching out for me.
"No..." I mumbled brokenly, as I scrambled in my corner, trying to distance myself from this man, but there wasn't any more room to distance myself from him with. I tried though, I tried, as I frantically grappled at the walls with my hands, shaking violently again, and turning my head away from the doctor as if that would make him disappear; if I couldn't see him, he'd go away.
The doctor stopped reaching for me and pulled back quickly. "It's okay, Bella, it's okay!" he said, trying to reassure me.
I looked back at him slowly, with dark, confused eyes.
"Look!" said the doctor. "Look who's here to see you!" and he turned his head toward the door of my room. My eyes followed slowly.
And then there was Renee. And Charlie. Together, like they were. Something in the back of my head told me they weren't divorced. Not here, not now...not yet.
"Bella?" asked my lovely mother, kneeling in front of me slowly, and smiling at me as if I was a delicate beauty, despite my dank hair that hung limply about my face. Charlie crouched behind her, looking at me with intent, but loving, eyes.
I gave an inaudible gasp upon seeing them, and my shaking grew worse, as I looked upon them with disbelieving eyes.
"Welcome home sweetie," said Renee softly, smiling, as a lone tear rolled down her cheek.
Dun dun dun. Well, review please! I do so love them.
-The Romanticidal Edwardian
