The Twilight Twenty-Five: Goodnight, Noises Everywhere
Prompt: Restraint
Pen name: Feisty Y. Beden
Pairing: E/B
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 9: Restraint
I waited a while before sitting up. I counted nine hundred Mississippis—fifteen minutes sounded about right for resting after losing a pint of blood, given healthy, normal blood pressure. I tried to remember the last time my blood pressure had been checked. When was my last physical? I never got sick—Renee had even tried time and time again to expose me to chicken pox, but my immune system was stubborn and refused to let that virus replicate. I never missed school because of illness, and there was a drawer in the kitchen of my mom's house (if it's even still standing, I thought to myself, wondering what Phoenix looked like these days—if there was even a patch of dirt left that could be called Phoenix) filled with my school attendance awards. I remembered a time when I wanted to get sick, to get to stay home and be fed Jell-o and chicken soup and ginger ale and saltines, to stay in pajamas all day and watch daytime game shows and soaps and those boring small claims court programs. But I never got sick. The greatest danger to my health was my own clumsiness.
As I held the gauze to my arm, I closed my eyes and tried to pretend the stone bench was the padded table where I'd donated blood a few years ago. I breathed deeply, trying to imagine the courtyard outside the heath center was the old Forks High gymnasium, forcing myself to smell the memory of socks, sweat, and hormones instead of the stagnant air tinged with death, decay, and a hint of sulfur. I thought of the blood drive, how scared I'd been, and yet so proud that those few moments of discomfort could save the lives of three people I'd never get to meet. I remembered looking around the gym at the other kids in my class with tubing taped to their arms, the coolers from the Red Cross. I remembered the taste of watered-down grape juice and Lorna Doone shortbread cookies they'd had at the recovery table, how strange the juice tasted after the grainy sweetness of the shortbread. Juice and cookies never went together. Milk and cookies made more sense, but they didn't give you milk after you gave blood. I never thought I'd miss milk, but now I sorely wished we'd had milk with our cookies at the recovery table, as if it would somehow make a difference to have that taste memory instead of the juice and cookies clashing on my tongue.
I folded a new piece of gauze into fourths and taped it to the crook of my elbow with a big band-aid and pushed myself up to sitting. I still had the bag of blood in my hand. When I'd donated blood at the school blood drive, I remembered how strangely sad I'd been when they'd whisked my donation bag away. I'd laughed at myself for being so … well, sentimental didn't seem like the right word for it, but it was something in that family. I'd been sad that a part of me was being taken away, and I couldn't say goodbye. I didn't know why I wanted to feel the heft of the bag in my arms, feel how warm it was, filled with the blood that had been inside me moments before, carrying my oxygen, fighting off foreign bodies, helping me live. I just wanted to touch the bag once, poke into its side with my finger. It's just blood, Bella, I remembered telling myself. It's not like you just gave up a baby or something. But I'd been sad all the same, even knowing that my gift would save lives.
Not this time, though. I cradled the bag in my arms as if it were a tiny, premature baby. "Hi there," I said to the bag. "Would you like to come home with me? You would?" I said, answering for the bag. "All right, come here," I said, holding the bag against my shoulder as if to burp the tiny, warm baby. "Baby's warm and filled with such healthy blood," I cooed as I walked. I was aware that I sounded crazy, but who was there to hear me?
The bag of blood cooled slowly, but I still felt let down as it slowly reached room temperature as I neared the house. I idly tossed the bag from hand to hand, which probably was speeding the cooling of the blood. Would Edward still drink it if it weren't the right temperature? Would it be like eating cold leftovers? I used to enjoy cold leftovers, back in the day when it seemed decadent to eat cold pasta and chicken for breakfast. Now, though, all meals were cold leftovers. I hated the feel of cold corned beef hash, the solidified fat melting slowly in my mouth, feeling oddly gritty before dissolving on my tongue. What I wouldn't give for a working microwave. Why hadn't anyone invented a windup microwave, like my flashlight and radio?
Lost in these thoughts, I stopped watching where I was going and tripped over my untied shoelaces. I went tumbling, and the bag of blood flew out of my hands in slow motion. "No!" I shouted after it, and I tried to propel myself farther as I tripped, stretching my body forward another few inches to try to break the bag's fall with any part of my body. I fell face first into the dirt, but my outstretched arms miraculously caught the bag. My chin got scraped pretty badly, but I didn't think it was bleeding very much. I had a first aid kit in the house; I could clean myself up there later. My left wrist ached tremendously, and it hurt to rotate. Dumb, dumb, dumb, I told myself. The bag was probably strong enough to survive a five-foot drop. But I couldn't take the chance. I could just see the bag bursting, leaving a large red stain in the road. I couldn't bear the thought. If the bag broke, I wouldn't be able to take out that much blood again for two months—that is, if I wanted to be safe about this. I had to survive if he were to survive.
Wincing with pain, I got up slowly and walked the rest of the way back to the house. I held the bag by its top in my right hand, my left arm hanging limply by my side. I tapped my chin with a finger. The blood had already clotted. It was more like a rug burn than anything else. Just a quick alcohol wipe would take care of it when I got home.
I'd left the door open, and I hurried inside, not taking the time to take off my shoes. "Edward?" I called. I didn't know why I called; he never moved from his spot on the sofa. I supposed I didn't want to be rude and surprise him, although I was also pretty sure he could hear my shuffling steps from quite a distance away, especially if his hearing were good enough to hear my heart beat when we sat in the same room.
"You're back," he said. "You were gone a long time."
"Was I?"
"You've cut yourself," he said, sniffing at the air.
"I'm fine," I shrugged. "Clumsy."
I wasn't quite sure what to do next, so I unceremoniously dumped the donation bag onto his lap.
"What's that?" he asked, too weak to open his eyes.
"It's for you," I said, patting his shoulder as I sank to my knees on the floor by the couch.
His hand came out from under the blanket and lightly touched the top of the bag. "It's still warm," he said.
"Does it feel warm to you? It cooled down a lot."
He still hadn't opened his eyes.
"Well?" I asked.
"What is it?" he said, puzzled, running his hands on the plastic.
"It's blood," I said. "You need to drink it. You're too weak to do anything."
His brow furrowed. "Where … did you get this?"
"From my arm," I said as casually as I could.
"You did what?" I had thought he would have been happy to get to eat, but I could tell even through his hoarse whisper that he was furious.
"I took the blood myself. I'm clean. You can drink it."
He tried to toss the bag away, to push it onto the floor, but he didn't have the strength. "I won't. I won't drink your blood."
"You already did, remember? It's clean. You didn't die. I won't make you sick."
"That's not it, Bella," he said, trying to push himself up to sitting. I grasped his hands and helped up. Wearily he leaned against the arm of the sofa as he opened his eyes, hissing against the brightness. He was like a newborn animal seeing the world for the first time.
"What is it, then?"
"I never … we didn't feed from people," he said. "I don't know what will happen if I drink this. I don't know what that will make me."
"I know it'll make you strong."
"I don't want to be a monster," he said.
"How are you a monster? This blood is given freely, willingly, and…" I blushed, wondering if I should say the next part, "with love." I looked at my feet until he spoke again.
"I won't," he said, shaking his head slightly. I couldn't imagine how much strength it took him just to move that much.
"Goddammit, Edward, you will." I brought the bag up to his nose. "Can't you smell that? Can't you smell the blood? It will revive you."
He pulled away as much as he could. "Do not tempt me, Bella. I will not drink your blood. I've done so many bad things in my life; I could not bear it if I took from you."
"But I've taken it from myself already," I said, growing angrier with his strange morality.
"Vampires … can't die from starvation," he said firmly.
I brought the bag closer with my good hand, hoping to awaken some survival instinct in him, but he kept pulling away, despite being just taut skin on iron bone. My left wrist still ached, but I still pulled my left hand back and struck him on the face as hard as I could. "Drink it. You have to. I know you won't die from starvation, but look at you! How can I eat when you can't? How can I breathe and let this blood, your food, flow through my veins when you are starving?"
I hit him again and again, and he made no move to stop me. I just wanted him to grow so furious that he'd just tear into the bag, into me, whatever. I just wanted him to eat something. My wrist was throbbing now, most likely sprained from my fall, and certainly bruised from hitting his unbreakable face.
Irritated, I rubbed my chin roughly with my knuckles. A bit of grit from the road was stuck under the skin, and I began picking at the pieces, reopening my wound. I became compulsive about it, scratching and digging and trying to get every grain out, until even I could smell the iron of my blood in the air. I heard something like a growl come from Edward, and his eyes were finally open, black as night. He looked like an animal. "Edward?" I asked, but it seemed as though he could no longer hear me.
If he hadn't been so exhausted, I'm sure he would have killed me right there, but his lunge at me was slow enough for me to dodge. Now was the time. I shoved the bag in his face, and he tore into it with his teeth, sucking and gulping and snarling. I backed away, my task complete, and watched with fascination as life seemed to flow from his face down his neck and into the rest of his body. He had no idea I was in the room—for him the entire world now consisted only of him and the bag in his hands.
When the bag was empty, he tore it apart with his teeth, greedily seeking more. The plastic was soon in shreds, the tiny remaining drops of blood staining the dusty rug. He closed his eyes and sniffed at the air, and then his head snapped toward me. My chin was still oozing a little, and I covered it with my good hand, hoping to mask the smell.
A tiny smile danced at the corners of his mouth, and with a smooth, cruel voice I didn't recognize, he said, "Bella, you really shouldn't have done that."
He rose slowly to his feet, but before I could celebrate how my blood had brought him strength, he said just one word:
"Run."
