Antithesis, Part 2

I've never had anyone make a vow to me before. Sure, there were lots of promises from family and friends, like I promise to meet you after school or Let's promise to be friends forever, but an actual 'I swear an oath'? I felt numb. It was like the loyalty of a dog, disguised in the dedication of a Marine. With a big gun. And a tank. And a battleship.

Rolle had pulled himself together and was standing on the porch just outside, gazing into the darkness. His arms were folded over his chest. He stood as still as a statue, but now I knew he was nothing more than a cairn, a pile of carefully placed stone. One misstep and it all came crashing down.

Edward was still shaken by what he'd heard in Rolle's mind. He wouldn't let me leave his side, not that I had any intention of going anywhere.

I touched my fingertips to his chin. What I saw in his eyes still frightened me.

"What did you hear?" I whispered as quietly as I could. Edward crushed his eyes closed and shook his head. Instead, Rolle answered from the porch.

"My story," he said loud enough for me to hear.

Something in him broke free from the spot where he'd rooted himself. He came inside and stood a safe distance away from me. The Cullens all stopped what they were doing and turned to face him.

"I never told Edward how I became what I am," Rolle said.

There was something wrong with his voice, something cold and untouchable. Whatever had caused his breakdown earlier was locked away now.

"The first time I touched her skin, I felt a jolt," Rolle began. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about someone else. "It wasn't static, but it was electric. It raced up my arm and we were both so surprised that we looked at each other. Whatever apology we were going to offer died in the air from numb lips."

I slid my fingers into Edward's hand as I remembered the first time I touched him, and could picture exactly what Rolle described.

"I saw my own expression on her face and knew she was thinking the same thing. I'd never felt anything more powerful in my entire existence.

"There was a rough beginning. There always is. This kind of thing is so rare nobody understands it. It's easier to think of it as an obsessive infatuation – that it will pass. But it only got stronger.

"We couldn't stand to be away from each other. Not out of desperation, but real physical pain to be apart. Even watching her leave the room made me anxious. We could talk about anything and everything. We'd tell each other our deepest shames, our guilty pleasures, our darkest secrets... without hesitation. We'd be going on and on about something and suddenly we were finishing each other's sentences.

"We had found something we weren't even searching for, but in the finding of it, it could never be lost. They say two halves make a whole, but only as long as there were two. Once the whole had been made, it couldn't be split again. Dividing it meant destroying the other. I can't tell you what we were before we found each other, but we made each other real and that couldn't be undone. There was no going back."

The way Rolle said 'we made each other real' made me think of the story about the rabbit. The Velveteen Rabbit. I used to read it to Renée when I was little.

Rolle's arms tightened around his chest and it looked like he would dislocate is own shoulders in the process. I knew what was coming and I shivered. Edward drew me closer.

"There was an accident. I was thrown from the car. She was pinned inside. I begged her to hold on. I begged her to stay. I tried to get her out, but I couldn't reach her." Rolle's hand rose unconsciously. "Only our fingers..."

My eyes started to burn again as I pictured the scene in my head. Blood, tears, their final words to each other... the fading light in her eyes as she stared at him, needing him to be the last thing she saw.

Edward flinched again, seeing everything as Rolle saw it in his mind. His arm was almost painfully tight around my waist, but I gratefully welcomed it.

Alice was tucked under Jasper's chin, her face hidden against his chest. Rosalie was in Emmett's arms as well, also stunned by the story. Esme couldn't listen any more and looked beseechingly at Carlisle who helped her up and took her from the room.

I wished I could have followed them, but Rolle was telling his story to us, Edward and I. He wanted us to know.

"I found out later it had all been intentional – the accident. A contract on another friend who was with us at the time – a sloppy job – collateral damage. When I found out all I could feel was insane rage feeding on the pain. I wasn't real any more. I stopped being human that day. A human being could never do what I did."

There was something terrible and frightening in his face, and I could see the killer in him now. No, not a killer... an avenging demon turned into even more of a monster driven by unthinkable pain.

Rolle shrugged and his tone could have sounded conversational but for the blank emptiness in his eyes. "I don't know how long I looked for him – everything is blurred together. I don't know how I finally caught up with him. I don't even know how I knew to be under the bridge that night.

"But I do remember his bones breaking under my fists. I remember him trying to fight back. I remember his gun and the smell of the powder."

Rolle's hand moved to a spot on his chest and I imagined he was covering a gunshot wound.

Then his voice was flat. "I remember him dying. I remember not caring, so I killed him again. And again."

Edward clenched his teeth and pressed his free hand hard into his eyes as if he could push Rolle's images out of his mind.

"I don't know how many times I killed him after he died. I did it until the rage was gone. Then there was nothing left. I was empty -- nothing. And then I heard his voice, soft and velvet.... He said he'd been watching me."

My eyes shot wide. I couldn't think the thought I was thinking.

"He said he was impressed with me, my persistence -- that I had a natural talent, that I could be useful."

The thought I couldn't think suddenly exploded with the words. Rolle had been human when he killed the man who caused the accident. He'd hunted down the killer as a human, and someone had been watching in the darkness….

Rolle was made a vampire that night.

"But I guess I just died without knowing what he wanted. A murderer..." Rolle's voice trailed off.

I narrowed my eyes. What?

"And now I'm here," he was still saying, unable to see past his own pain to see my confusion. "I'm here and she's not."

"What do you mean?" I whispered, unable to stop myself.

Rolle didn't seem to hear me now. He was the statue again, as he was five minutes ago when he was out on the porch.

Edward sighed slowly and stroked my fingers in his hand. "Bella, he thinks he followed her in death. He doesn't know what he is. He thinks this is hell. Losing Gillian broke his mind as well as his heart."

"Gillian." I don't know why I felt I had to say her name.

"He had an eidetic memory when he was human, and that gift became his curse when he was changed. He can never forget. When he remembers something, he remembers it as if he were really there all over again: each smell, every sound, the smallest details. He cannot distinguish between the past and the present when he succumbs to these memories."

I shivered at the thought of it. Time couldn't heal all wounds if you kept reliving them in high definition over and over again.

"Why didn't you tell us, Edward," Alice wanted to know. Her voice was cracked and thick.

I'd never seen Alice so upset before.

Edward slowly shook his head. "He never told me, never remembered these memories around me before."

"Poor guy," Jasper said. I could tell he was also thinking about the eternal memory. He pulled Alice closer, but it looked like he was hiding behind her, too.

Everyone had things in their past that they wanted to forget.

But Rolle's story and his earlier reaction toward Edward's relationship with me were coming together now.

A rare love, misunderstood... True love? That perfect match? Finding another person who completed you and filled all the empty areas in your heart that you hadn't even known were empty? Being unable to live without them because it was like living without air?

And this strange being frozen before us now. A musical prodigy turned vampire tracker and assassin. Whose mind was shattered wandering through the world without his true love. Believing he was trapped in hell because he murdered the man who killed her... and pledging to protect the love Edward and I felt toward each other.

I was torn about Rolle.

Part of me felt grateful to have a staunch protector who truly understood what was at risk. I had no doubt in his desire to fulfill his oath.

Another part of me wondered if I would end up the same way if anything ever happened to Edward.

Something else occurred to me then. Something Edward had told me once about how rare it was for them to change. That they were frozen in time as they had been the moment they were transformed from mortal to immortal. I looked at Rolle, realizing his heart would be eternally broken. His rage at Gillian's death had been spent in his vengeance, so he was eternally hollow and bereft. That his memory of her and her death would replay in his mind again and again as if he were living it for the very first time.

I felt tears begin to burn in my throat and I remembered what Alice said about Rolle being able to escape from hell when he played music.

I clutched Edward's arm. "Play the piano," I begged him.

His face looked pained at my own expression of helplessness. He brushed my cheek with his fingers and rose to his piano. Watching Rolle, Edward played a song by George Winston. I couldn't recall the name of it, but I knew it was part of his autumn pieces.

Rolle blinked and turned his head to where the music came from. The rigid hold he had on his body seemed to melt, and he dropped his arms to his side. His feet carried him to the piano as if he were unaware of his own actions until he stood at Edward's shoulder, looking down at the keys. The blank horror of his face slowly vanished, too, and I could see the playfulness return to his features that he had demonstrated when he first knocked on the Cullen's door.

Alice was right. Two sides of a coin.

Rolle reached around Edward's shoulder and cautiously played right-handed, adding to the simple tune. As the music slowly grew into something more, Edward slid over on the piano bench to make room for Rolle. Within seconds, they were both playing the keys and the richness of the sound from four hands playing at once was breathtaking.

The distraction had worked. Rolle played now with a fervor and even though his back was to me, I could see his own smile reflected on the faces of Alice and Jasper and Emmett as they watched Edward and Rolle play in unison.

Carlisle and Esme slowly came back into the room to watch them. Esme laughed when the two performers clashed into each other's elbows and moved in synchronization to cross arms in order to reach the keys they needed to play -- Edward's left hand, Rolle's left, Edward's right hand and Rolle's right. I craned around in my seat to try and see better.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Rolle said, jumping up from the bench.

The large room was suddenly and unnaturally quiet after their exuberant performance.

Rolle blurred to the far side of the house and came back with a loveseat in tow. He positioned it next to the piano.

"You want a hand?" Emmett asked with a dismayed laugh.

Without answering, Rolle blurred again and there was a small pile of pillows on one side of the small sofa. In another step, he was at my side and before I knew what he was doing, I was in his arms.

The entire room had frozen in place. Seven shocked and tense faces were looking at us. Edward's was the most frightening of all. Rolle seemed oddly oblivious to what he had just done to the Cullens.

"Wow, you smell great!" Rolle said with a stunned and shocked expression on his face.

I could feel the blood run out of my face.

"But you can't see anything back here," he continued, again, not able to consider the implications of what he'd just said. There was no way he could know how my scent affected Edward.

He carried me over to the loveseat next to Edward and the piano and propped up my leg onto the pillows.

"There!" he said with a satisfied grin. It took him a full second to look up at the others in the room, returning their tense stares with his own confused one.

"What?" He looked at Edward. "That's better, right?"

If it weren't for the heart-stopping tension in the room, it would almost have been comical to watch the change in Rolle's face as he rolled his eyes.

"Pro-tec-tion," he enunciated. "Pro. Tect. As in gonna kick anyone's butt, built-in body-guard type. A little faith! Jeez."

Edward gazed at him and uncertainty was written all over his face.

"Well, if you're gonna sit there gawping at me," Rolle snapped, "then get your butt out of that seat and let me teach you a couple things, plebe!"

Edward glared at him skeptically, but relinquished the bench. He sat behind me on the small sofa and wrapped his arms protectively around me as Rolle happily took his place at the Grand Piano.

Shaking his head as he considered the keys before him, Rolle muttered, "Vampires. You're all so damned serious!"