It was a one-shot. I swear it was. Really. But I can't stand up to persuasion like that. I mean… argh! So I give in. The one-shot is now a multi-chap. Are you happy now?! Are you?! Are you?!
On a bright note, I passed English at the head of my class. Woohoo! Who cares about Maths/Physics/Chemistry, as long as I passed English?!
Okay, I do. Meh.
S L I P P I N G - A W A Y
A Twilight FanFiction
by Becky Scarlett-Cullen
Chapter 2
But it's too late to think of that now. He's too selfish to give it much thought, anyway. Brushing away wet hair plastered to her ivory neck, he bites down. Into their future.
It's painful.
In fact, it's nearly as painful as his own transformation, almost one hundred years ago. Watching her scream and cry as she's changed into something inhuman and monstrous. It hurts him as much as it hurts her.
It' been so long, but she seems so familiar. Her warmth in his cold arms, intensified by the fire that he knows burns inside of her. She still fits so perfectly into his stone arms, but he always knew that she was made for him. That doesn't stop him from questioning his right to happiness, though. His right to her. He's done so much wrong, he thinks. Surely he's past the point of no return now, the point where no amount of redemption on his part can save him.
But, he supposes, that doesn't really matter, as long as he can have her. He needs her. He needs her more than he needs oxygen, or blood. Hasn't he proved that, by staying near her, despite the fact that her blood is so much more potent to him than any other he has encountered?
He sometimes wonders whether he had an ulterior motive for leaving, though. Maybe it's because he was never really strong enough, and it got too much for him. Still. Whichever way he looks at it, his absence was for her own good.
She screams again wildly, and her spine arches. She's trying to escape, and that's good. She's still alive, at any rate. But the pain of her transformation is taking its toll on him. He's not sure how much longer he can withstand this terrible, all-consuming pain.
As she burns, he suffers.
He knows that he's damned her to this, and he regrets it already. But wouldn't stone Bella be better than no Bella at all? Better than a Bella, lying at the bottom of the sea, dead and forgotten? Is vampirism really worse than that?
Yes, he thinks. Yes it is. Shame he's too selfish to have seen that before she passed the point of no return.
Alice sees. Of course she does. She sees, and it makes her incredibly happy. Bella's not going to die.
Not really.
Not entirely.
She'll still exist. In a way.
Though it'll be strange… Strange in a good way. But it will be strange to have Bella as a sister. Wonderful, but strange.
Alice wonders how Rosalie will react. Perhaps she won't mind.
She almost certainly will.
The finer points of her gift can be incredibly frustrating. Edward has not yet made the decision to tell his family—and Bella has not made the decision to even go with him. Rosalie does not know about this whole affair, in any case, so how could she have made her decision to accept Bella, or not?
Alice sighs. Sometimes it would be easier just to be relied upon to predict the weather, or even to be normal. To not have to think about what the future brings, to be able to live in the present. That's what she wants. She wants to live in the present.
Shame her gift makes that impossible.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall…
Oh, how annoyingly cliché, she thinks. The kids at school all assume that all she does all day is primp and preen. How else could she look so perfect, they think?
If only they knew.
If only they knew that she'd take ugliness any day, instead of this parody of life. She wonders, once again, if Bella knows exactly how lucky she is. The human girl. You know, the one Edward was so pathetically consumed by for several months. Rosalie was glad when he saw sense, really.
But now, she's not so sure.
Does Edward really deserve that? The pain? Wouldn't it have been easier if he had just changed her in the first place?
No, she mustn't let herself think that. No. No. No. No-one deserves this. No-one has ever done enough wrong to land this fate. Only the unlucky survive.
Mind you, if anyone is unlucky, it is Bella Swan…
She knows exactly what is happening to her body. It's changing. She knows enough detail about the transformation to know that she's becoming a vampire. Oddly enough, her thoughts stay coherent throughout the pain, as if it is detached from her body as it burns.
Vaguely, she hears soothing words whispered in her ear. But it's just a hallucination, of course.
She'll wake up, and she'll be alone as ever.
