The Dove in the Eye of the Storm

by jmolly

Light flooded the dark space and I scuttled back from it until I hit wall. Then, her small form blocked the doorway, and knelt down before me. She stroked my head. "Hey, honey, it will all work out, like I told you. It's nothing to be upset about, I promise."

3. Chapter 2: The Wind Rises

Chapter 2: The Wind Rises

Happy Father's Day. This is actually one of my favourite chapters ever, and it's highly apropos, imho. Special love goes to my hubs, and my Twiguy readers. I'm rushing to post, as this weekend is going to be insane.

Thanks as always to my Beta, 2old2care, who is probably a little scared that I'm going to keep posting this weekly. Heck, I'm scared, too, so keep me going with reviews. It's the end of school in 2 weeks, and my kids are nuts. All 150 of them. lol

Go to my Facebook Fanpage (you need not sign in to see it) and have a boo at the marvelous banner Mimozka made me for this story. The link is on my Profile. You will also find period pictures there of places Edward mentions, in the Dove Album.

I am very excited to tell you, I have been nominated for The Shimmer Award for Best Storyteller. Please check out their site and nominate/vote: Theshimmerawards dot com

Thanks to Room340C, Mimozka and Camilla10 for pre-reading :)

Look for the 'Dove' playlist on the jmollytwilight2 Youtube. The link is on my Profile. This chapter's selections start at #5:

'Shattered', by Trading Yesterdays

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.

Sources:

The Twilight Lexicon

Biblical Astronomy dot com

dooryard dot ca/wes dot html (Carleton County Colloquialisms)

Eastport Maine, Wiki

wwii dot ca/page9 dot html (The Battle of Vimy Ridge)

Here's the mirror, behind there is a screen
On both ways you can get in.

'Gravity of Love', -Enigma

Saturday, January 10th, 2004:

Denali, Alaska:

It was getting worse. I didn't know how to function.

The multitude of stars were impressively still. Timeless celestial majesty: stars imparting messages from thousands of years previous. Some of them were now dead, like I should be. Nevertheless, I catalogued their presence, real or imaginary, taking comfort in their existence: Orion, commonly known as Sirius: The Prince, The Victor, The Guardian. In the older, Dendera Zodiac, it had nothing to do with dogs, drought, or pestilence. The constellation was The Eagle or The Hawk, the particular enemy of the serpent. The Hebrews called it Naz-Seir, The Nazarene.

I wondered if Jesus looked down on me, cool and remote as the stars bearing his name. I was not His any longer. My soul had long since burned away. But I took solace in trying to be good, trying not to offend Him in any way other than continuing to exist. I'd have stopped, were it within my power. I had secret hopes of achieving oblivion someday, rather than burning in Hell. I had burned once already.

Ethereal brightness was beyond the ken of someone as lugubrious as I. I was a sinner. There would be no redemption for me. I had burned all my bridges to God back in 1921, when I left Carlisle and went on my killing spree. I wondered how I might have ended up, had it not been for Jem.

June 20th, 1923:

Eastport, Maine:

I'd gone about as far east as you could get without falling off America, or ending up in Canada. I sat with Jem, on some bundles of goods waiting to be loaded on ships, as the sea lapped at Union Dock. A storm was coming in, so the boats hadn't gone out. A lot of ships were coming into port, to wait out the storm, so the men were not sitting with their nets like we were. They were almost all off trying to get extra work, either ferrying goods, or in the canneries.

I liked living in ports. They were busy, and a lot of people passed through, never to be seen again, and there was very convenient water to dump my kills in undetected. In 1921, I lived briefly in Boston, and while on those docks, I read about the birth of my pal Laurie's son, Edward Masen Harris, on June 22nd. He was the best -albeit belated- birthday present I had ever received, but I would never meet him personally. I did, twenty years later, contrive to communicate with him through letters.

I had met Jem on a sardine fishing tender in Eastport, Maine, in the spring of '21. He let me tag along with him, and work with him and his 'buddies', fishing, gutting fish, and hauling food out of the thirteen local canneries. At Jem's suggestion, I left Boston and moved to a boarding house in Eastport, owned by a widow named Peggy Wilkinson. She ran a well-respected house on Water Street. Eastport was a good place for me. The tide came in 25 feet every day, and dragged whatever was dumped in it straight out into the Atlantic, facilitating my disposal of dinner.

Jem got me work. He taught me how to knit, crochet and make fishing nets, and he showed me how to work a rigging.

Edward Harris's birth announcement sat in my wallet, begging for my attention. After several weeks of anxious dithering, I asked Jem to go to Chicago and search for the Harrises for me. He agreed, and I gave him all my pay to fund the trip.

The Harrises had moved, leaving no forwarding address.

Eventually, I found out the fate of my best pal: Captain Laurence Matthew Harris died in '22, cleaning up Vimy Ridge in Northern France. Quite unexpectedly, I found his funeral announcement in the Obituaries. The war had been over for some time, and the Battle of Vimy Ridge occurred way back in 1917, but the Allies were still cleaning up land mines, metal and bodies, and Laurie stepped on one. I only found that part out, because I went to lurk outside the church, cap in hand, during his funeral. I hadn't thought the pain of my continued existence could get any worse. I found out I was wrong.

How I missed him.

In 1936, the people of France would declare Vimy Ridge sacred ground to the Dominion of Canada, as that future nation was the only one to successfully liberate the Ridge from German control. A lot of people said that Canada became a nation on April 14th of 1917. Nobody else had been able to take the Ridge. Bless them all. In 1936, the French would build a monument. I would go to the dedication ceremony. But all I would see in Vimy was the loss of my almost-brother. I came to hate war with a passion.

I never did tell Carlisle about Laurie.

"You seem sad today, boy," Jem said on that day in 1923, as I thought over my losses. Unbeknownst to anyone, it was my birthday. If I could call it that anymore. It was Edward Masen's birthday, and that Edward was dead.

Jem was watching me with his sharp blue eyes as he sewed two pieces of knitting together. I loved his face, mapped into deep crevices by time and seawater. I loved his accent, too. As an 'outcountry', I dared not emulate it. The North East New Englanders, also known as Countryers or Acadians, shared it with the Canadians of New Bruinswick. The Acadians all seemed to have inherited quite a bit of their dialect from the French Canadians, but they had expressions all their own. The running joke amongst Acadians was that Canadian Newfoundlanders had gotten lost on their way to New York, and ended up in Acadia.

I had found out it was not wise to tease 'outcountry' Newfies. There were a lot of jokes about them, and I had tried to tease this big guy, and he had punched me. I couldn't duck because I was pretending to have weak eyesight, and the poor beggar ended up with a broken hand. I had had to pretend to have a glass jaw.

I pulled the shuttle through the fishing net, double-selvedging the edge, without pause.

"Don't pay me any mind," I told Jem, grimacing.

"You some hurting unit this morning (You are pathetic this morning). Howard she going, son (How is it going, son)?" he frowned.

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat constricting me, and pushed up my sunglasses. "I miss home, that's all," I shrugged. I never talked about home, and Jem didn't pry. It was part of why he made such a great friend for me. He respected my privacy. He knew it must be hard for a partially blind boy, permanently unable to tolerate the sun thanks to a battle with mumps, to get by in life all alone. He assumed I was sterile, and that that was why I showed no interest in the girls who flirted with me. He told them to let me be. He didn't ask questions. Usually.

"That's normal, ain't she wha (don't you think) ?" he sighed. "Tell me about home, Eddy."

'Whirls and eddies in the brook of life', he'd josh me, winking. Yeah, I was an Eddy, alright. I swallowed the lump. I could hardly tell him that I ran away from home to eat people. I chose one of my other reasons. "My foster-father is a doctor. He remarried. I was useless. In the way."

Jem recoiled in shock. "Ain't no way that's true. You telling me you ran away from home, because your Pa remarried? Was they mean to you?"

I looked out at the sea, murky-dark and rough against the pier. "No, sir. But my ... 'Pa' was... strict. He wanted me to behave in ways that I just ... couldn't. I got mad, and I... left."

Jem's jaw dropped. "You retired, boy (Are you mentally slow, boy)? You're telling me you ran off on your Pa, in 1921, nigh-on three year, and you ain't been in touch with him since? He probably don't sleep nights, fretting about you."

I looked at the gulls, wheeling. "I'm sure he's fine, Jem."

"That don't fizz me none (That doesn't impress me)," Jem sighed, giving his head a resigned shake. "'Magine (I think not)! You got brothers, kid?"

"No, sir. I'm the only..." I trailed off, realizing that Carlisle actually probably was missing me. God, how I missed him, but they would reject me if they knew. They would finally lose their tempers and roar at me and cast me out, and it would hurt so, so much more than being alone. I knew that somewhere, Carlisle would be praying for me and wishing me well. If I went home and confessed my transgressions, revealed my demonic behaviour, that would stop. He would despise me. He would wish me dead. Wish he'd never created me. And Esme would never forgive me for leaving. I was certain of that.

"You oughter go home," Jem frowned. A father pines for his son, even if he don't approve of him, and this kid weren't ever a christer (little devil). They tamarack if he goan (They would dance for joy if he went home).

If Jem knew the truth, he would run screaming from me. At all cost, it must never out. I was too weak to ever live truly alone. I looked, shame-faced and silent, down at my net.

An hour later, Jem tied off his wool, and held up the cream, cable-knit sweater with a satisfied sigh. Beautiful at knitting, was Jem. I made my own sweaters, but they weren't fancy. He thrust it at me, smiling. "Here, boy."

I looked at him, confused. "What?"

"It's for you. You need somethin' warmer than what you got for runnin' about on the wharf at night. Now don't gawp at me, put it on. If it don't fit I'll make you 'notherun (another one)."

I pulled it over my head wordlessly.

"I-yah (Yeah), now that suits you fine," he said smugly.

"Thank you," I said numbly, fingering the sleeve. It wasn't itchy. It had to have some cotton in it. I couldn't raise my eyes. "How did you know?"

"Know what?" he frowned, eyeing me teasingly. "That you're woefully under-dressed for a doctor's son?"

"That it's my birthday," I admitted.

Jem's face turned stern. "Holy ol' liftin dying bald-headed Jesus! God works in mysterious ways. You're a great kid, but you're dumb as a bag of hammers when it comes to people. I'll miss you, kid, but it's toyme you gunnoo boot (it's time for you to go) home."

"There is no going home again," I murmured. Jem was upset with me. I didn't deserve a friend like him. Perhaps I should move on. Tell him yet another lie. Tell him I was going home to my 'Pa'.

"Kid, you're like a son to me. But you gunnoo boot (going to depart). How old are you now?" he growled.

"Seventeen."

He shook his white head, grimacing. Runaway at fourteen. "Go home, Edward. They'll be glad of you. I know they will. Don't set here dog wetting (sit here wasting time). Get your ass gone, or I'll tell Peg to throw you out."

God works in mysterious ways. To punish me. Jem doesn't want me any more. Happy birthday. The hollow in my chest got bigger.

Jeezum crow! Kid don't get fuck-all (Jesus Christ! Kid doesn't understand anything). "Hey, kid, it's not 'cause I don't want you," Jem gasped. "I just know this place ain't for you. You're a man now. If you goan home, and they don't want you, you can boot right back to me. I always got a place for a nice lad who's a hard worker."

I stood slowly, with feet like lead, setting down the shuttle and the unfinished net. He gave me his calloused hand, and I grasped it gently, not wanting to let go. "You write to me, sonny? Lemme know how it turns out? You send it care of Peggy, and she can read it to me."

"Yes, sir," I husked.

"Okay, boy. Giv'er! G'wan, you better header now (Put some effort into it. Go on, you had better leave now)."

I ran. But not home. Back to New York. To live in a rat-infested tenement. To feast on gangsters and pimps. That night, I killed three, and dropped them in the river. And I wrote to Jem, to tell him he was right. To tell him that Carlisle and Esme welcomed me back with open arms, and that I was grateful he'd pushed me to leave. All lies.

But I didn't cry. I deserved to be alone. I wasn't going to waste Edward Masen's last tears on a person who didn't deserve them. And Edward Cullen didn't. At all.

December 25th, 1924:

Ashland, Wisconsin

I had finally caved. Life was beyond miserable. I hated the perfection of my cells with a passion, because they were indestructible. They simply couldn't stop working. Nothing could make me stop hating myself, either. I stood at the end of the drive, while the snow fell gently onto me, and tried to move forward. And failed. Then, I saw life at the window: They were looking at their Christmas tree. The void in my chest, where familial love used to be, throbbed around the edges.

"I wish..." Carlisle said, and I thought he sounded sad.

"I know," Esme sighed.

"Carlisle," I moaned softly.

His head spun toward me, and he flew to the window, searching. I stood, head down, wearing the long, beaver skin coat of one of my victims. It was too big, and obscured my identity. If I even had an identity any more. My spirit had been swallowed up in depravity, loneliness and guilt.

I couldn't cope inside my head any longer.

"Edward?" he asked softly, and then we locked eyes. "Edward!" he yelled joyfully, and he and Esme came barrelling out to meet me like bullets shot from a gun. Then, I was swept off my feet, and they were touching me and kissing me and sobbing like a pair of sappy dates. I clung to them both, as though I deserved them. As though they could save me, even though there was no chance of that.

Finally, they tugged me into the house, under the lights. I kept my eyes down, even though I suspected that Carlisle had already seen they were saturated with human blood.

"So where have you been?" he beamed, still looking rather soggy. Look at me, Boy! Please? We've waited so long for you. I'm so glad you're back. So, so glad. Happy Christmas.

"Uh, most recently, New York," I murmured, running a hand through my over-long hair. "Carlisle, I've sinned."

"But you're home now," he said happily. "You came back to me."

Steeling myself for rejection, or death and damnation, I raised burgundy eyes to my sire, my soft-spoken father, and met his ochre ones honestly, watching in dread as they turned black like ink seeping through molten gold. No words were needed. He knew precisely what I had done.

Oh, Christ aid! He's broken. Why could I not have done a better job? "Well, it's ... just as we feared," he murmured, soft-spoken as ever. Wasn't he going to scream at me? My human father would have done.

I sank to my knees, putting my head on his feet. "I'm so sorry. I wish I could erase everything I've done. Please forgive me."

He hauled me up almost roughly, glaring down fiercely into my eyes. I waited for the axe to fall, cringing. But he grasped my upper arms instead. "It does not matter. You're home. My boy came home for Christmas. This is the best day of my life."

Speechless, I let him draw me into his arms, and Esme made me into the filling in the sandwich. My throat was stopped with tears, but my eyes were dry.

"You're staying," he said, and it was more of an order than a question.

"If you'll have me," I asked, sneaking a peek at Esme.

"Of course," she said, as if there was no other possibility in the world. "I'm so glad you came today, for Christmas. We're moving to Rochester at the first of the year, and we've been worrying terribly that you would come back and find us gone. We were going to leave a forwarding address with the hospital, but we didn't know if you'd check."

"I guess that was good luck," I said tonelessly.

"Luck, nothing! It was Providence!" Carlisle beamed. "Come inside by the fire! You're just in time to help us serve dinner at the mission, and of course you'll want to see your room. We didn't touch anything. Come on now, take off the coat. It's awfully big for you. How did you come by it?"

I bowed my head, not answering.

"Never mind, boy. Look! Father Christmas left this. Why don't you open it?"

He handed me a red sock, lumpy with stuff. I stared at it. They had bought me presents, in hopes that someday I would show up to claim them. They loved me. I had no gifts to offer in return, the stores were closed, and regardless, I had no money. "I ..."

"Never you mind that. You're all we wanted for Christmas. Go on, then."

Inside it were three books that had been published in 1922: Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'At the Earth's Core', T S Eliot's 'The Waste Land', and Agatha Christie's 'The Secret Adversary'. I assumed the stocking had been stuffed two years previously. They had missed me, for certain. I was both honoured and upset. There were a couple of scientific gadgets, and a Christmas ornament with my name on it, which I put on the tree. Close to the bottom of the sock, there was something that felt odd. When I unwrapped it, I found a leather wrist cuff with a silver crest on it. I noticed that Esme and Carlisle both wore the same symbol on rings of gold, backed with jade.

"I had a family crest designed," he told me. "The lion is for courage and loyalty, the hand over it pledges faith, sincerity and justice, the chevron signifies protection, or faithful service to mankind, and the shamrocks are for eternal life."

"That's... highly apropos," I told him.

"Will you wear it?" he asked me, pressing his lips together.

Wordlessly, I held out my wrist. I knew what I was promising: he would be my Vampire Prince, my Dom, not just my sire. "I'll never leave you again, Carlisle."

"Hah. If you find your mate someday, you might just change your mind. But I hope you will never leave me again under the same circumstances," he said seriously. He watched me closely. "It's going to be hard for you, going back to our way of life."

I couldn't look at him. "I don't think so. I've been miserable for the past couple of years. The guilt is... unbearable."

"Why didn't you come home?" he asked, astonished.

"I was ashamed. I thought ... you wouldn't want me back."

"I will always want you. Who did you kill?" he asked gently.

"Killers, mostly. Gangsters, murderers," I said. "I thought if I protected the weak, I wouldn't ... be sorry. But I'm not God. I asked them to repent, and if they didn't, I killed them. I judged them all. They haunt me.

"Do you repent it?" he wanted to know.

"Yeah. I wish I hadn't..." I trailed off.

Carlisle took the cuff and put it around my right wrist, and buckled it. "Would it be moronic to tell you to 'go forth and sin no more'?" he wondered.

"You can't absolve me, Carlisle," I said sadly.

"No, only God can do that, Edward. Ask Him."

I remained silent. What point was there in asking God? He didn't love me. I was an abomination. But I wasn't about to say that, and ruin Carlisle's Christmas. He was singing Psalms in his head, for Pete's sake. And it was enough for me to be home: Home for Christmas, and taken back without any hesitation. Had it not been arrogant, I would have thanked God for that mercy. But I didn't dare. He might strike me with lightning or something, and that would really put a damper on the evening. It became one of those happy times that I would treasure always, knowing I had been blessed when I didn't deserve it.

I fell into a routine, and pretended I was a good boy who had never sinned. I did whatever I could to please Carlisle and Esme. I was the perfect son. And I was a little less alone. I took comfort in the fact that I was being good, and life was better than somebody like me deserved. There was no reason for tears.

Saturday, January 10th, 2004:

Denali, Alaska:

I paused in my reflections, wishing on Naz-Seir that I had a right to some peace. There was no peace, and my recent joy and rekindling hope had been dashed from me.

"What ever do you hope to accomplish by lying in the snow?" Eleazar chuckled, flopping down beside me. He was an attractive Spaniard of dubious pedigree, and even more dubious morals. Expressive and jovial, with his square face, black moustache and wavy hair, he had overwhelming enthusiasm for life. He had to have been in his mid-forties when he died.

"It's peaceful. Refreshing," I said quietly, looking up at infinity. I wondered if there was a place, finally, where space ended. What would hold it all in? Well, it was too vast to ever get an answer, anyhow.

"Hiding from the girls?" he asked frankly.

"No. Not your girls, at any rate," I admitted, feeling the heavy burden pushing down on my chest smother me. The blood the blood the blood the blood the blood...

"Ah. So it is a girl. You have found your mate," he said. "But you are mourning."

"She's human," I lamented.

"So where is the problem? You woo her, then you change her. No difficulty," he shrugged.

"She belongs to God. I don't have a right to mess with that. She's not for me."

"If she is, indeed, your mate, you will wither away without her. You had better get over that attitude, fast."

"Alice Saw me kill her," I told him, the lump coming back into my throat.

"So, have Carlisle change her for you," he shrugged. "He changed Emmett for Rosalie, did he not? I do not see the problem."

A straight-forward solution. One I had not dared to consider seriously. Because it was wrong. At first, I wanted to transform her, but upon reflection, I couldn't imagine despoiling her soul. Practically the first thing I did as a Newborn was kill an innocent man. And now, I was damned, hundreds of times over. Everything about her was beautiful. It would destroy me to watch her fall from grace. Better to obliterate myself. "The problem is, I can't destroy her soul."

Eleazar sighed. He's worse than Aro. "I really don't get you, Christian. You believe in God, then say you are beyond his reach. What's the point then? You're really fucked up."

"Excuse me?" I asked indignantly. This from a guy who was a complete hedonist?

"You fetter yourself with morals, and yet you refuse to believe you belong to your god. What's the point in being good, if you are forever outside in the cold? Keep her human, then. You'll have her only a few years, and it will kill you when she dies. You'll go mad, and Aro will take you out."

I considered it carefully. What he meant as sarcasm struck me as a possible solution. It might only be delaying the inevitable, but better a few years of joy than nothing at all. Better to have a few years of bliss before facing eternal damnation, or nothingness. And she would keep her soul. And go to Heaven. I liked it.

I missed Esme and Carlisle. And my crazy siblings. I wanted home. Surely, I could learn to control my thirst for Isabella Swan. I hadn't slipped once, since my return to the family eighty years earlier.

Perhaps the lure of her blood was not as powerful as I thought. She attracted me in other ways, so perhaps I had confused the two hungers. She was just a human girl. I would manage my urges, and I would worship her, even if she wouldn't forgive me, and took up with someone else. I would remain near her, in whatever capacity she desired, and it would be enough. Somehow, the knots inside me eased.

I turned to face south, and stretched so that my muscles rippled. "Tell Dona Tanya 'thank you' for letting me stay."

"You are going home?" Eleazar asked, confused.

"Yes," I confirmed. "I don't think I can learn anything more, here, that will help me. Thanks for the advice."

"You are welcome. Go and get your mate, Tigre!" he encouraged me, envisioning something totally different from either my hopes or my fears.

"Yes," I said simply. "Yes, I'm going to get my mate." Would it be in a good way? It did not matter. Our futures were linked, for better or worse. I needed to be with her. I took a large step toward home, and then another, and started to lope, then to run, then to fly.