A/N: … … … … … yes, you can beat me now. I am so ashamed of myself and lack of updating. … … … … … I'm sorry… … … … ... I love you guys?... … … … … ok, I'll just write… … … … … …
Bella's POV.
He was so warm. It was such a contrast to how I usually felt. I have been cold inside for so long now, and the only time that ever changed was when I was with Jake. And he really was huge! Standing, wrapped in his arms, I could fully appreciate just how tall and well-muscled he is. His arms had wrapped around my back and folded over themselves again, they were that long.
"Bella?" his voice resonated through my whole body as it rumbled through him. I pulled back to look at his face, his eyes pinched with worry and anger.
"Yeah?" I had to swallow twice to moisten my throat, as it had gone dry with the panic and tears.
"What's your real name?" I jerked a little. He was the first person to have asked that. Renée hadn't cared enough to bother asking my name, she just wanted away from me. Charlie was too focused on keeping me alive and healthy to ask things he knew I couldn't answer.
"I don't have one anymore." His eyebrows pulled down and he leaned back to get a better look at my face.
"What was your name…before? You had to have had one." I nodded slowly, knowing what he was saying was obviously true, but not sure if I could give him an answer. It had been made perfectly clear to me at the very beginning that no-one could know anything about my past.
"That's true…but it doesn't change anything. My name is Isabella and as far as anyone knows that's the way it has always been." I shrugged at the end. To some people they might think it strange that, that didn't bother me the way it probably should.
"Doesn't upset you? That you're no longer allowed to be who you were?" I paused to consider what he had asked. I glanced around and saw a fallen tree and tugged Paul over to sit on it. He took my hand and it gave a small bit of courage.
"No. At first, I didn't care…about anything. I mean nothing at all affected me at that time. I couldn't function, anything that I did was…forced. There was a blur of time when I was in the hospital, but I don't remember much of that. There were operations and morphine." I had to look away. The things the doctors did to fix my body were amazing and the operations were perfectly executed. Unfortunately, because of some of the chemicals that my torturers used on me through those three months, I had grown an immunity to pain medication. Morphine included. But I didn't bother with telling the doctors that, and I wasn't going to tell Paul either.
"So during that time, nothing did matter. I couldn't do anything anyway, whether I'd wanted to or not. After I got out, I was shipped straight out the country and to America. It was always a place I'd wanted to go, before everything happened, and even that couldn't make me care. Then came the witness protection. That was difficult. I didn't care what happened to me anymore and they wouldn't leave it alone when it came to my safety." I huffed.
"In truth the people that had been sent to work with me irritated me. So, yeah, I wasn't functioning like a normal person, but come on! They didn't have to treat me like a child, acting as though I would only know what a child of seven knew-at most! I just wanted to be alone and work through the trauma that I had been through and I wanted to do it by myself my way. But they didn't let me.
I had to work on my accent, change it from my own to an American one, which was pretty easy. Remembering all the details about a life that wasn't mine was easy too, I had no problem with retaining the information. But developing the relationships with Charlie and Renée? And Jake? Those were difficult. They weren't my family and they weren't my friends. They were hers. They didn't belong to me, they had nothing in common with me.
So in that case, yeah I cared about living a life that wasn't mine. I wanted to feel numb, I didn't want to…miss them, but I did." My eyes started to mist over.
"Charlie is a complete Godsend. He is just phenomenal. If it wasn't for him, I don't know where I'd be. Jake," I smiled, laughing a little.
"Jake is like my best-friend from back home. We would have been friends even if I wasn't pretending. He lights up my day and he keeps me smiling. For the short time I'm with him, he makes me forget, makes me feel like I am her. Like this is my life and that everything is how it should be. But then I remember that it isn't and I hate myself, but I also know that at some point I have to move forward and keep moving, rather than staying stuck.
So yes, a lot of the time it does annoy me that I'm not who I was. But at the same time, I like where I am now. I don't miss the old me, because in truth I don't really remember her. For a short but intensive period of time, I was programmed to be no-one other than Bella, so that's who I am now."
And that was that. Paul squeezed my hand and I looked at his face, looking for the emotions that he had displayed earlier but there was nothing except concern.
"Who were they, the people who…did all this to you?" my heart skipped and I exhaled a shaky breath. I knew he would ask, it was only reasonable.
"I don't know. I had never even seen him before, or his fucked up girlfriend. They could have been related though. They acted like they had been around each other for decades but neither of them could have been older than twenty five. Both of them had odd accents and they were graceful. I know that's a strange thing to pick up on but that's just what I'm like. I remember the little details about people I see. But anyway, they were oddly graceful in everything they did. Their movements were fluid, like ballet."
He clasped my chin and turned my head towards him. His eyes were like onyx, dark and threatening.
"What did they look like?" this was the part everyone found difficult to believe.
"They were both pale, paler than me and I didn't think that was possible without being dead. The male was tall, around five feet ten, and he had long unkempt blonde hair. It was raggedly cut and filthy. He did most of the – dirty work shall we say. He could get quite creative if he didn't get what he wanted. The woman was a red-head, more feline in action. She had a tendency to use her…hands. She was a lot more hands-on about everything." I shrugged. That was what they were like.
"Oh! And they never wore shoes." He snorted at that. They were also covered in mud and dried blood when I first 'met' them. But Paul didn't need to know that. Everyone else had simply dismissed it as my imagination or stress. Strangely though, for all the dirt and grime and blood that they carried themselves in, they had a sickly sweet smell to them. Almost like their natural scent was sweet but had been mixed with burnt sugar and almonds.
"Anything else that was strange about them?" I shifted my eyes away, knowing what I was about to say would not be believed.
"Yeah. They both had…red eyes." Paul stiffened beside me. Glancing up at him through my lashes, I saw his jaw clench. He was vibrating again. Dangerous. Not this time. This time he was angry for me, not at me. Cautiously stretching my hands out to touch his face, I stroked along his jaw until he had calmed down and stopped shaking. He looked at my face. Then touched my hand and followed my arm with his eyes. Tracing along the lines of my body he ogled each part of me, as though committing it to memory.
"How bad are your scars?" I inhaled through my nose to old back the taste of bile that rose every time I thought about my scars.
"They're not pretty but I guess they could have been worse. Why?" his hand had descended towards my stomach and I knew then what he wanted.
"Can I see them?" I sat and flicked my eyes over his face, looking for any sign of what he was thinking.
Standing up, I slowly un-tucked my top from my skirt and with shaky hands I started to slowly pull the hem up. I got to my hip bones and stopped, unable to bear the feelings of on-coming rejection. That would hurt too much. The only other person I had willingly shown my scars to was Charlie.
Paul stood with me and gently cupped my hands and tugged. Together we lifted the fabric over my stomach to below my rib cage and let him see. The uneven ridges and bumps glittered faintly in the poor sun light, showing them off to his piercing eyes. His fingers lightly traced them and I had to turn away from them.
"Do they disgust you? They shouldn't. These signify that you are a survivor and that you are strong. So yeah, they might be something that you wish you didn't have, and yes, they do give you flaws but that just makes you more beautiful. Your imperfections are beautiful. They are part of you and you shouldn't be ashamed of them. You fought for something that you believed in. People that have enemies are the people that stood for what they believe in, even if they are the only ones standing. That lonely person was you."
The tears had started and now Paul was left to wipe them away.
"Thank you. I've never thought of it that way. I've always just accepted that I deserved them." He shook his head violently back and forth.
"You never deserved them but you should wear them with pride. You survived. How ,any others would have given up before they were free? What you went through was horrendous and I'm in no way going to pretend to understand how that makes a person change, because I don't know, but what I see before me… is simply magnificent."
He dropped my shirt from his hands and I let it flutter back down to sit where it should be. Tucking strands of hair away from my face behind my ear, he moved closer to me. He wrapped his arms around me again and kissed my forehead.
"As long as you le me, I will protect you. Nothing will ever harm you as long as I'm around. I swear to you, I won't let them."
Bless this man, but he didn't know what he was up against.
A/N: How was that? I promise to try and keep more regular updates. But if I don't make an appearance within a four week period, feel free to message me and verbally kick my ass. Until next time my lovelies! xxx
