"If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall;
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before." -- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act I Scene I
"I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely."-- Ludwig van Beethoven, letter to F.G. Wegeler
Dit-dit-dit-DIT.
Even her knock was shrill and demanding. Beethoven's Fifth on fast-forward. But Edward's fingers never faltered on the piano keys, and his music ignored the rhythm of the knocks. He'd spent the last four hours improvising variations on Bella's lullaby, pouring his emotions into a reservoir of sound. Once they were floating away for everyone to hear, the feelings might stop eating at his soul. Edward knew the melody so well that the exercise demanded just a little of his attention, leaving the rest of his mind free to work out the shape of his predicament.
A few minutes ago, Edward's dissonant chord-pounding had resolved itself into a stoic passacaglia, turmoil giving way to despair. Then the infernal knocking had started. It didn't matter… Edward had thought through all of the relevant facts, and his decision was made.
"Go away", he spat through clenched teeth. His fingers continuing their funereal march, and didn't stop until the doorframe broke and the piano lid shut, milliseconds after his hands cleared the keys. Alice's eyes were blazing with vision and fury, and her small trembling hand was denting the piano lid. Edward's own hand crumbled the corner of the bench as he watched Bella shivering on the damp forest floor. But even as her stare threatened to burn Edward alive, he took comfort in the way the cold ground made Bella's body twitch, the way her moist lashes expelled grime from her eyes. However intense her pain might be for minutes or hours or days, Bella would remain a reactive human being. The world would chill her, dirty her, and eventually comfort her, and she'd have no way to escape these ministrations.
"It will be hard at first," Edward whispered through clenched teeth, avoiding the burn in his tormenter's eyes. "But time will heal her."
"How can you be such an idiot?" Alice's voice shook at a frequency that lent it the timbre of opera glass. "Really Edward, I used to think it was just lack of imagination, but how much imagination does it take to believe that leaving Bella will hurt her the same way it hurts you?"
"She's human," Edward countered, his voice remaining as flat as his passacaglia. "When I'm gone, Bella will have no choice but to resume human existence. She won't have the option of blinding herself to her surroundings. Sooner or later, something will get through, and she will move on."
"I don't have to look at the future to know how wrong you are. But her future… I couldn't even show you the worst of it. She seems to get a bit better, but if I try to look ahead for more than a few months… everything goes blank. I've never felt anything like it. Ever since I noticed the blankness, I've been trying to find out if she-- if she d--"
"Don't be stupid!" Edward interrupted with a snarl. "It is perverse and self-indulgent to look for death threats set in motion by the departure of monsters from her life." Getting up to pace, Edward lowered his voice to an almost-threatening whisper. "Don't go looking for her future at all. We've done enough damage." Without giving Alice a chance to respond, Edward turned on his heel and entered Carlisle's study.
Alice stood motionlessly for a few minutes, focusing as hard as she could on the edges of the void in Bella's future. Their unfamiliar raggedness soon panicked her enough that she rushed from the room to join Edward.
"If this were not the only way, I could never bear it. Nothing she can tell me will change what must be done. She does not see reason when it comes to her own protection, and I must leave her before my selfish desires drive reason from my thoughts as well." Edward sank morosely into his father's chair as Carlisle gazed out his large study window, letting the early morning glow flood his amber eyes.
"On the contrary," he murmured. "I saw Bella face death, last night and last spring, and for her in that moment there is nothing but reason. She is afraid because she loves her life, she loves her parents, and she loves you. I cannot express how extraordinary it is that her fear has a purpose in the face of death. When death comes that close, fear as the only purpose most humans can comprehend." Carlisle closed his eyes, and spoke again more warmly. "The only moments when I've known that kind of fear were the moments when I forced this life upon you and your mother and siblings, without the knowledge or consent or blessing of anything but my own selfish compulsion not to endure this existence alone. I don't think I ever completely forgave my own weakness until I saw a human girl choose to love and embrace my son, my family, and my way of life."
Carlisle's still-closed eyes were blind to the emotions that were rising in his son's face, and they flew open in astonishment when Edward's chair toppled. "She will not choose this existence. I forbid it. Stay if you like… I… I need to tell Esme goodbye." Carlisle sank onto the edge of the desk as if Edward had struck him, and Alice was so unnerved by the sight of her father's vulnerability that she left the room as swiftly as her brother had done.
An hour later, Alice peered through barriers of lace, crepe, and her own clasped knees to confront the only man who ever dared to invade her closet.
"Get out of here," she protested, and was uncharacteristically surprised by the hurt look on Jasper's face. "I mean, the feelings in this house must be driving you crazy. Go on… I don't think I'm going to school today."
He winced at her swift mood change. "Alice, none of us are going to school today. We're…packing and going to Denali." He reached out to brush the skin of her wrist with one reverent finger, and froze when a thousand thread loops ensnared his wristwatch. Decades of living with Alice had taught him to treat snagged lace like a live grenade, and he freed himself warily before peering in confusion at the offending garment. "What is this, Alice?"
"It was supposed to be for Bella." Alice spread the wedding dress across her knees, somehow looking more pitiable than she ever looked when affecting sorrow to get her way. She closed her eyes, relaxed her tiny body into Jasper's embrace, and buried her head in his scarred neck. Jasper folded the dress carefully, then brushed his sinewy hands over her birdlike neck and shoulder bones. She twitchily registered the confusion he projected, and he reluctantly explained.
"I don't understand.… I asked you if you wanted to get married when we found the Cullens fifty years ago."
"And?" Alice twisted gently to look him in the eyes.
"And… you said the ritual didn't fit."
Alice nodded, curling up against his chest again.
"When I found you, I had no idea what marriage was. What love was, even. After we learned that Carlisle felt the same way about Esme that we felt about each other, that Rosalie and Emmett and billions of human couples knew love too, it was magical to feel like a part of something so old." Dreamily, Alice kissed a luminous scar that had always been her favorite. "I know Rosalie and Emmett love each other, but seeing them get married felt so… false. You told me that Rosalie wasn't perfectly happy, just agitated. She always wanted a beautiful wedding, so she's had lots of them, and in a way it makes sense, because her love for Emmett is what gave him his new life, his new family. But she always hoped her husband would give her babies when he married her, and Emmett can't, and she wants more and more weddings because none of them can do what her first wedding was supposed to do."
Jasper considered this, then countered, "But Edward and Bella couldn't have babies either. Not if she became one of us."
"It's different for Bella. She doesn't dream about babies. Edward's all she wants. Except… he could also give her brothers, sisters, the big family she's never had, and a new world she thinks is wonderful. And at the same time… he'd be giving her to me. To all of us. Completing us. You and me… our completeness doesn't have anything to do with this family, or any family, but theirs could. Jazz… what he's doing is so, so wrong."
Alice trembled with silent sobs, and Jasper knew she was asking him to condemn their brother as she did. And in a way, Jasper did mourn the loss of his strange human almost-sister. The expectant, worshipful way she looked at Edward, the rest of the family, and the very house they lived in sent shivers up his spine… they reminded him of the look that Alice had worn when she'd found him. And that same look crossed Alice's face when she looked at Bella, dreaming of a new sister who could show her what it meant to have real birthdays, real high school friends, and one day a real wedding. Alice still melted his heart with looks of smoldering glee, of knowing adoration, but there was no escaping the way that her bond with him repressed the rush to collide with unknown territory that was the first thing Jasper had loved about her.
Jasper sat rigidly at attention as he imagined Alice falling exuberantly in love with a human boy, giving him the gift of an immortal family, and marrying him in good faith. One delicate hand was now stroking his brow, trying to smooth away the worry that poured from his mind. He was glad the general malaise in the house gave him a good excuse for his emotions, which plummeted further when he felt a stab of envy for his unhappy brother's selflessness.
