It's been about a week since Bella's therapy session. I've picked up a second shift at the hospital and I've been trying to work through my emotions. I got a chance to talk to Jasper on the phone when he wasn't around Bella. He gave me a few mental exercises to do and a few prompts to get me to question why I feel the way I do, so I could work through everything. Amazingly enough, just the simple act of talking myself out of being cautious has helped with that emotion. I can take it, come what may, basically.
The hardest to let go of surprised me, but not Jasper. It's my guilt. My guilt for bringing her into this life, for failing to keep her safe, even from herself, for damning her soul. Even for all those she's hurt and killed because we didn't know how to help her develop her gift while she was here. Jasper even brought up my rebellion years that I spent away from Carlisle and our diet. He was right, of course, that I still held guilt for taking lives even though they were evil people. Jasper shared that he also has guilt for his actions when he was with Maria, and Bella helped him take some of it into her. He argued with her not to take it all, because he didn't want her to deal with it. So they compromised, she only took some of his guilt, his pain, but not all of it. Not nearly.
As I worked through my sorrow, I realized it was stemming from regret and my guilt. When I acknowledged, at Jasper's nudging that I didn't really regret turning Bella, some of my sorrow lifted. It was almost comical that a simple prompted thought could help release my sorrow. It really did feel like a burden was lifted off my shoulders. Amazing. Why hadn't I talked to Jasper about this before?
It was after my second shift at the hospital when I decided I wanted to try and approach Bella. I could hear that Desdemona and Carlisle were upstairs reading from the dictionary, strange, but it seemed to work, her thoughts were beginning to be punctuated with words as the images and sounds spread out in her mind. Alice and Jasper were alone in their room spending quality time together. A quick thought about the other members of the family had Alice's voice piercing my thoughts, Em and Rose went with Esme to the home improvement store. She wanted to buy some supplies for a new project. Bella's on the porch.
Just like Alice, to set up the situation for me. I took a deep, unnecessary breath and stepped out the front door where Bella was sitting on the porch swing. She turned her head slightly as she heard me come out the door. She slid from the middle of the swing to the end, and I sat beside her quietly. Just relaxing in the silence with my wife. We stared out onto the lawn for what felt like an hour, but it was only a few minutes.
"Bella, would you like to go running with me?" I asked out of the blue. As she glanced over at me, she looked a little startled but recovered quickly.
"Yeah, sure," she said quietly and stood and made her way down the stairs. The epitome of grace as she didn't look at her feet at all. Even forty years later, just the smallest thing would send me spiraling into a memory of her as a human. I smiled to myself as I followed just two steps behind her. Before I knew where we were going, she took off and I followed, soon falling into step beside her.
As twilight fell over the forest and the diurnal animals settled into their homes for the night, I relaxed into the joy of just running. There was no destination, I didn't have to pretend to be human, I didn't have to focus my thoughts and weed out those of others, it was just running. If it weren't for the awkward silence between Bella and I, the run would be exhilarating. As it was, though, I felt more peace than I had felt in a while.
Apparently the silence was too much after a while, and Bella broke it with an even more awkward question, "How's Desdemona?"
"I don't know," I responded without giving further details. She'll have to work at this too.
"What do you mean you 'don't know'? How could you not know?" She asked confused, but with a tint of hostility in her voice.
"Just what it sounds like, Bella, I don't know. You'd have to ask Esme, Alice, or maybe Carlisle. I've picked up an extra shift at the hospital this past week and I haven't been home much. When I am home, I'm in my lounge." I replied in kind. A bit of hostility. She hasn't seemed to mind that lately.
"Oh," she said. I couldn't pick up an emotion or anything from that one word, so I remained quiet for a bit. As we turned east a bit, I confessed.
"I heard some of your therapy session last week."
"WHAT!" She stopped dead in her tracks and I had to backtrack a couple hundred yards to be within a normal conversation distance.
"I heard you say you didn't like my emotions," I elaborated. Bella's eyes had started to turn black, and she stood perfectly still with a furious look on her face. As I started to feel the pain creep into my brain, I tried again, "Before you make me pass out, Bella, test my emotions, are they any better?"
She stopped increasing the pain, though I was left with this burning fire that felt like my brain was boiling. It was extremely uncomfortable, but I remained standing while she just stared at me for a moment.
"Hmm," she grunted, easing the pain from my brain slowly. "You aren't full of anger or sorrow as much. And the caution is completely gone. Thank God! Your guilt is less overwhelming too." As she contemplated my emotions aloud she eased the pain away completely. I took a deep breath, but she continued, "You talked to Jasper?"
"Yeah. He helped me work through some of it," I conceded that I'd had help.
"He's good at that. He's been helping me too," she admitted. I was curious and I raised my eyebrows, hoping to get her to elaborate. It worked and she continued, "We've gone to a full theater and he's let me release sadness throughout the audience during sad parts of the movie. He let me pick the movie once and I picked a comedy. It was quite hilarious to see everyone sniffling during the parts of the movie that were the most funny. Jasper didn't think it was as funny as I did. We've tried other outlets, political debates that I riled up with anger. They didn't need that much instigating from me. A class of yoga students at the gym I released anxiety and agitation as they got to the meditation part. Jazz did like that one. He keeps picking large groups of people so when I release the emotions they don't cause so much pain to any particular person."
There was a slight smile on her face as she recalled some of her escapes with Jasper. It was good to see. It made me feel happy, if only for a moment. I hated to bring the gaiety of the moment down, but I wanted her to know, "As much as I care about our family, and my patients at the hospital, you come first, you know?" She looked a little lost, that I was bringing this up now, but she waited for me to finish. "I'd do anything to work this out between us. I miss us. I miss this. This is the first relatively normal conversation we've had in a while. I'll work some more on my emotions. Can we go running again tomorrow? I want to work through this rift between us. Will you try with me?"
She smiled a sad little smile at me, and nodded. "I'll probably still attack you, now and then, but I'll try to keep it at a low level. This was nice." I smiled back at her and reached out for her hand. She reached back and we held hands for a moment before we both took off back home, somehow knowing it was time to go back, knowing that this was enough for now. We could get through this.
When we returned from our running I felt a bit more optimistic than I had in months. Perhaps in years. But as surely as I felt it, the panicked thoughts of our family seemed to bring it crashing down. Bella noticed my body stiffen just slightly and she picked up that I was upset and started running faster at my side. "What is it?" She asked.
"They're thinking too fast. Alice saw a phone call? Carlisle's on the phone with... Aro?" I was filtering aloud for her.
"Shit," she muttered as we came up to the house and into the door. We were met with 6 of the 7 members in our family in the living room, waiting. They were shocked at first by Bella and I together, but then returned to frantic thinking about all the possibly reasons that Aro would call Carlisle.
Esme was standing behind the overstuffed chair Desdemona was sitting in, her hand resting gently on Desdemona's shoulder as a silent form of comfort. Alice was sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the sofa, her eyes glazed over from a vision. Jasper was also sitting on the edge of the sofa his whole body turned towards her, one hand behind Alice's back, the other on her knee, a worried expression written on his face. Emmett was sitting on the floor in front of Rosalie. One arm propped up on a bent knee, a serious expression on his otherwise happy face. Rosalie was sitting forward on the loveseat, one hand on Emmett's shoulder, the other running through his hair. The look on her face showed desperation and of all the worried thoughts and panicked feelings throughout the room, her expression scared me the most.
Bella and I sat down in the empty spots as we waited in tense silence for Carlisle to join us. I sat stiffly next to Alice, while Bella angled her body against the corner of the loveseat Rose wasn't on. With the setup of the furniture, we had an effective triangle. Esme arranged this part of the room like this, just for family gatherings so no person was separated or cut off from any other.
We all stiffened slightly as we heard Carlisle open his office door and make his way down the stairs. He joined the group and stood beside Esme, grasping her hand like it was the only thing holding him together. Other than that, nothing about his posture or voice indicated the worry and fear that were present in his mind.
"Aro has decided that it's time to visit Italy," Carlisle said almost conversationally. "We were given the option of having them visit us here," he paused and finished mentally, and kill one or two of us for having such a large coven. "...or we could go there. All nine of us."
"How does he know about Mona?" Esme asked carefully.
"He didn't say, he just insisted I bring everyone. All nine," his calm demeanor easing everyone else. At least for the moment.
"When?" Emmett asked after a lengthy pause.
Alice answered then, "Day after tomorrow. He's not in any mood for postponing this meeting."
"What would have happened if they visited here, Carlisle?" Bella asked. Her intuition for asking the right questions when someone didn't want to answer showing as Carlisle took a deep breath. He really didn't want to answer.
I volunteered the information because he was scared of the reaction everyone would have. "If Aro and the guard had to come here to see us, they would have killed a mated pair. Could have been me and Bella, or even Carlisle and Esme. He hadn't decided yet and he liked the idea of us squirming and pleading for our lives."
Carlisle nodded, and hung his head in shame. Each couple, aside from Bella and I, tightened their hold on their mate and gasped. Desdemona especially looked scared, because she didn't have a mate to hold on to. Her hand reached up to hold onto Emse's tightly.
The next day and a half were spent in close proximity to each other. All nine of us stayed in the house. Worry eclipsing most of our thoughts. Carlisle and I settled things for a quick vacation at the hospital. Esme helped Desdemona pack some clothes while the others of us packed our own things. We packed light, hoping that we wouldn't be staying long. When it was time to leave, Alice had already made our flight plans and all we had to do was board the plan for Volterra. Jasper and I had created Desdemona's passport and we were ready to go. Though I was worried that she wasn't ready to be near humans. None of us had worked with her on that. But she reassured me, with a smile, saying, "It's okay Edward, I can just hold my breath if it gets to be too much." She had come a long way from the mute she had been. Though her thoughts were still more images than words.
It would take about 24 hours to get to Rome but there was a long layover at JFK so we could hunt before it was time to go. We were all quite nervous – about Desdemona's thirst, about going to Volterra, and getting out of Volterra with our lives. When we finally arrived in Rome, we rented two vehicles and drove through the countryside. The beauty of Italy marred by the tension we were all under. We stopped to hunt once more before we entered the city and the nightmare began.
