All characters are owned by Stephenie Meyer. The lyrics of Walking Wounded are owned by The Tea Party.
a/n: Hi! So sorry this is late. I've been held cooped up in a bunker, waiting for The Rapture that never happened. Anyone want some cans of creamed corn? I've got like a thousand of them. Seriously.
Annie was nagging me on Twitter. I'm probably going to get yelled at for being late. Harrrruuuummmpph.
"Are you comfortable and numb
Do they all succumb to all those lies
Does it satisfy the greed
Is it all you need?
Is it all you want?
Well baby I'm not that strong
And I'm walking wounded
All alone."
- Walking Wounded, The Tea Party
Chapter 9 – Walking Wounded
I am dead.
I think I am. I don't feel anything, smell anything, and see anything except for a sea of white, bright, stark and blinding.
Loneliness and obscurity hums through me. Maybe this is hell, because I know a thing or two about it. I lived in it. Loneliness is hell.
But the greatest thing about being in this state is, I…don't…feel…a…thing. I try to move my hands, fingers—wiggle my toes…nothing. I am not hungry or thirsty. I'm just me.
I think this is heaven even if I don't believe in it. Someone up there is confused. I don't belong here but I want to stay here.
Please…don't make me go back.
I wait for the brightest white light to guide my way, or the angel of death.
Nothing.
Maybe they're next door. Maybe there's someone whose injuries are worst than mine.
He will come.
I close my eyes…darkness.
Yes. This is better.
So much better.
A woman with the long brown hair sits beside my bed, stroking my face with such gentleness that it makes me want to cry. She looks familiar. I squint my eyes and try to remember where I've seen her before.
The squinting hurts my head.
I close my eyes again.
Then it came to me, a flicker of sudden awareness and memory from a life that seems so far away.
A silver frame in Charlie's room.
I gasp. And choke. Her image becomes blurry in my eyes while the air in my lungs sputter helplessly.
What are they doing to me?
What is that noise? Someone turn it off!
I trash in my bed.
Don't go. Don't go. Don't leave.
The woman disappears before I can say her name.
"Mom?"
My words garble into an incomprehensible mess before being swallowed by a tube that's being shove down my throat.
Someone stabs me in the arm.
Instant, glorious relief.
Darkness swallows me again.
Edward sits beside my bed, clutching his head upon his hands. He is rocking himself back and forth, forward and back. His mouth opens and nothing comes out.
I want to yell. But I can't even speak. My throat is sore and feels congested.
"Edward…" I try to say, but it comes out in a wheeze.
He looks up, eyes wide and wet.
He starts to talk but all I hear is a deafening roar in my ears.
I close my eyes and attempt to calm myself. Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque…
I find it weird that I'm counting in Italian.
I reach out to him with my bandaged arm.
He comes closer.
Closer.
Closer.
His handsome face is much closer now.
All my anger, all my resentment, all the hurt and humiliation comes out in a form of a slap in his face.
My hand hits nothing until it comes down on the metal bedrails.
I cry out; tears spurt from my eyes.
It hurts. My hand hurts. It's throbbing like a toothache, bathed in the sweetest vanilla ice cream.
"No…no…not again," I beg.
Someone stabs me in the arm.
Hello, darkness.
Charlie is sobbing.
We're in the dark now, the two of us. His breaths come in rhythmic hitches, full of grief and loneliness.
I want to hold his hand and tell him it's okay but I can't move at all. My stomach feels hollowed out, like someone scooped out everything inside.
Why can't I move?
I try to open my eyes, but they're so heavy—they don't hurt, they just won't open.
And then he starts to talk.
"Once—once upon a time," he begins. His baritone voice is oddly comforting even if it comes out dripping with hardship. "There was this beautiful woman. She lived in Italy with her parents. She's got long brown hair and the darkest eyes I've ever seen. Renata lived a sheltered life, protected in the safety of her parents' villa. One day, her school had a field trip and met this man. She was young, only seventeen when she met Charles. They fell helplessly in love. But it was doomed from the start for she was promised to marry a man named Raphael. But she couldn't love him," he stifles the sob in vain then continues on with his story.
"Charles and Renata met secretly and quickly realized that they cannot live without each other. So they concocted this plan to run away. Raphael found out about it and confronted Renata. She told him the truth, that she was irrevocably in love and that there was no way she would marry him. Raphael took the news gracefully, didn't even yell at her."
Is he telling this story to comfort me?
I feel his hand on mine, holding on for his dear life.
"One night, on her way home from visiting Guissepina, her best friend, she was stopped by a drunken Raphael. It was dark and they were alone. He—he—"
Charlie is sobbing loudly now. One of those gut wrenching, unstoppable torrent of sobs.
"He dragged her to the fields then beat her senseless. When she can no longer fight him off, he did the unthinkable—unforgivable. He forced her, over and over, again. When he was done he spat at her face and left her for dead. Oh God. I couldn't—I couldn't even recognize her face, Bella. Both her eyes were stitched shut; her olive skin was black from bruises. In spite of all that, she was still the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. She turned me away over and over again. She didn't want to see me. Her family wouldn't let me in the hospital so I waited. I haunted the hospital grounds and asked every day if she was going to let me see her. Every day I prayed; endless days of waiting and praying. Three weeks later, she was finally ready. She told me she didn't want to see me anymore; that I should go back to the States and I should forget about her.
"But I didn't give up, Bella. I told my parents that I was staying in Italy for good. I was going to wait for Renata until she's completely recovered. The physical injuries were easy, the psychological injuries, however, haunted her forever. Before I even had a chance, she disappeared. Gone. No trace. Her parents didn't know where she was. I lost my mind, Bella. I was in Italy as a student, I was barely getting by. When I've exhausted all my resources to find her, I gave up. I went home.
"Six years later, I was back in Washington; a corpse among the living. I've never gotten over her. I spent my time painting in the dark; wanting to die but couldn't bring myself to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. She came knocking on my door with this little girl who looks just like her; long brown hair and dark eyes that see through everything."
He pauses for a minute, inhaling and exhaling a painful breath.
"Her eyes, your mother's eyes, looked empty—soulless. I knew something had changed inside her. When I tried to hug her, she backed away as if I disgusted her. As if I was the same person who ruined her. I couldn't stand it, didn't know how to help her. But I'll be damned if I'd let her go again. We got married a couple of weeks later but we weren't the same people anymore. We were two strangers living in the same house. I tried. I took her away, left you in the care of a couple that were good friends of mine. It was painful to see how much of her was destroyed, Bella. It wasn't even a shadow of what she used to be. The carefree, happy, kind person turned hard and spiteful who couldn't give two shits about anyone, let alone, you. She couldn't even look at you then without remembering how you came to be.
"One night, she borrowed the car. She said she had something to pick up somewhere. Those days, we don't bother asking each other questions, so I gave her the keys without premonition that she's about to do something stupid."
He takes my hand and grips hard as if he's trying to absorb whatever strength he can get from me.
"I am telling you this because I need you to understand. That if you will not survive this then there's nothing left for me. I will follow you and your mother without hesitation. And it's not because I'm trying to guilt trip you to stay but I just can't live with myself knowing that I did exactly what your mother did to you. She treated you like furniture; you're just there because you are. That you have no value in our lives. We were consumed with hatred, blinded by it that we didn't realize we were punishing you like you did something criminal and I am sorry—truly inadequate, I know—but it's all I have. And I promise you that I will not let anyone hurt you because no matter how who fathered you, you've always been my daughter. So please, I beg you, Bella, give me a second chance."
My bed shakes from his sobs.
And I want to comfort him but I just can't move. I try to open my eyes again but they're so heavy…so heavy.
~ooOOoo~
I was sick for months.
I could count the number of words I spoke during that period. Charlie wouldn't leave me alone. I don't blame him. Any day now I would wake up from this nightmare. I prayed to any god, even to the one that I hated for the punishment to end. Hatred burned inside me, for myself, for my father, for him. For myself because I was weak, for my father because he didn't care, for Edward…for obvious reasons.
Thirteen months, four days, 10 hours and twenty-two minutes. People count down the days for special occasions. I counted the days for that particular moment in my life when breathing didn't hurt as much.
People always tell you that life goes on after a tragedy happened in your life. Liars, the lot of them. Life certainly does not go on. How could it when the life you wanted died on that one tragic day that was forever burned in your head?
My attempt at suicide cost me a broken leg, broken arm, clotting in my brain, and several broken ribs. The doctors wondered how I'd ever survived considering all my injuries. I wanted to say that because some higher power was cruel; the same ones who'd thought I'd not suffered enough. Six months of recovery time and numerous therapy sessions later, I was able to walk again. What used to be shiny, waist-length hair was reduced to a lifeless bob that framed my haggard face. The silence that used to cloak the cottage grew more severe after that day. If the cottage was quiet pre-Edward, it became a tomb, post-Edward. I can't believe my life was categorized into two now; pre and post.
The worst part of this new lease on life that I'd been given is the ruthless knowledge about my past. My mother, out of utter disgust with my existence, ran away to have me and then left me at the doorstep of a convent. I don't exactly know how she was able to take me back when I was five years old but Charlie hinted that some kidnapping was involved.
How much more tragedies can one person take in her lot in life? In some ways, Charlie figured that Renee blamed him. That had she not met him, Raphael, the man that her parents trusted enough to marry wouldn't have brutalized her. The old me would find the romance in his rationalization and would readily disagree with him. The new me, the one whose rose colored glasses view in life was shattered into dust in one night, wouldn't be so quick to differ.
So my mother wasn't drinking. She really did kill herself.
I couldn't even begin to imagine the horrors that she went through; it certainly made me feel ashamed of myself for wanting to die when my mother's harrowing experience in the hands of a man was much more horrifying than mine. It certainly woke me up. Brooding and willing my life away because of a weak man was not how I want to keep on living. That doesn't mean that the perpetual heaviness in my chest vanished every time I think of him.
Raphael, the monster who created me, disappeared into oblivion, apparently. Nobody knew what ever happened to him. My father said these words with such calmness that had cold fingers of dread trailing up and down my spine. It wasn't because I'd suspected him of being responsible for Raphael's disappearance, it was just the way he said it ineffectually. The way I see it, he was either resigned that he didn't want to exact revenge or it was because the years of being estranged from my mother had left him anesthetized.
When I had fully recovered all my faculties, Charlie decided it was time for us to see outside the boundaries of Washington State; which we did as soon as I got the clearance from several doctors.
We traveled to Europe, bypassing Italy for obvious reasons, and then we went to Australia; where the skies were endlessly blue and the sun shined for weeks. He sketched, I read; he talked, I listened. We toured galleries and gave me lessons in Art. He was pretentious but knowledgeable, patient but short-tempered. All in all, we talked a lot about the past and attempted to forgive each other's misgivings. I've even attempted to draw, a feat I'd never done before. I was awful at it.
But we never mentioned Edward.
He was that person who changed us, for the worst and for the better. He took a lot from us. But he had given me the father I never had. I was grateful for that. My pain and despair of the past year had driven Charlie out of his own hermit shell. Every day he tried his best to compensate for those times when he ignored me. It was good at first; but then he started to hover on days when all I wanted was to be left alone. On a good day, my mind is empty and numb, exactly like how I want it to be. But on most days, when I'd walk past the room that he used and could still smell a hint of his essence, it took a lot from me to go back to that dark place and jump again. He ruined that for me too. It was my paradise until his memories made it my hell.
One early morning, I was jostled awake by a memory so profound that I sobbed heartily. My right hand reached down to my belly. The thought of being pregnant with his child was terrifyingly sweet. Hatred for the man who didn't care enough to think about precautions grew and hardened even more around my heart like a calcite. He was so callous in the way that he took me—selfish and typical of a weak coward. And at no point did I ever fantasize about Edward being around to help me bring up his child.
But all those thoughts were all for naught as it never happened. I could only thank emotional stress and physical injuries for preventing another upheaval in my life.
The slow months passed until Charlie was sure that my young heart had forgotten about it and I didn't do anything to dissuade him otherwise. I went back to my routine; meadow, home, and walks with Jake filled my days until the restlessness and the memories almost drove me insane. I couldn't stay in the house any longer.
One day, Charlie told me he wanted to paint me; something that he'd never done before. But days went by and I didn't hear a word about it again. He had a forthcoming exhibit in Seattle so I chocked it up to the hecticness of the days leading up to that.
"Bella?" he stood on the threshold of my bedroom, unsure, for the first time that I'd ever seen him.
"Yeah, Dad?"
"Can I show you something?"
I followed him to his studio (another one of those changes that had under went in our lives). It was weird being in there. The walls and floors were splattered with paint of different hues and vibrant colors. Most of his art were packed in crates but for one that was still propped on an easel. Without preamble, he slowly uncovered the piece.
I was gasping for breath as soon as it came into view.
The dark days came back with a vengeance in the form of a painting so real that I would've fallen on my knees had it not been for Charlie's quick hands.
It was I—the broken version.
It was that day—only darker.
The clouds swirled above me in the angriest of color while my face…it was a picture of resignation, sorrow and pain.
Charlie watched me broodingly. "I'm so sorry, Bella," he said with grim eyes. "But I had to."
I nodded.
A note was stuck at the bottom of the easel which read, "A father's broken heart" written in Charlie's block letterings.
I could feel the wound throb painfully again.
Charlie looked at the canvass despairingly. His voice, when he spoke, was muffled and uneven.
"I liked him, you know. I suppose I knew what was going on between the two of you on the second day that he was here. But I trusted him. I trusted my own judgment. It never entered my mind that someone like him would risk persecution for taking advantage of a minor," he faced me with a sudden determination. "We could sue him, Bella. He could pay for what he did to you…expose him to the world."
I shook my head vehemently, trembling with the need to run away again. "No," I croaked. "I just want to forget, Dad. Forget that it ever happened."
I realize that he had just given me the opening I needed.
"But it's so hard to do that here, Dad. There are so many memories—painful ones attached to this place," I looked up at him cautiously. "I've been thinking that maybe it was time for me to go to college…"
He sucked in a breath then closed his eyes for a minute. "Are you sure? I don't want you living on your own in the city, Bella," he turned away and stared out the full-length window of his studio, lost in thoughts. "I'd miss you if you went." He added in a low voice.
The admission touched the child in me; the one who'd missed any parental affection terribly. "I'll miss you too, you know," I smiled. "But I have to find a life of my own." I realized that Edward was right that I'd been marooned in a backwater of the world. If I didn't take the chance, I might never get out.
"He loved you," he said huskily. "He wanted me to tell you that. He asked me to say…"
"Don't," I jumped in wearily. "I don't want to hear anymore," out of the depths of my hurt came a stronger voice and even stronger conviction. "Don't mention his name again."
He set out to make me fall in love with him. Deliberately making traps with seduction and words meant to ensnare. Well, he succeeded. And the next time I see him, it would be hard pressed for anyone to stop me from sticking a knife deep in his chest.
He had shaken my belief in human nature, my own judgment and my father's judgment. In a short time, he'd won both of us; trusted him, liked him. Only to be betrayed in the end.
I look at myself in the mirror and find the cruel physical changes that I've gone through. My eyes are darker, my face took on an impish quality, pixie-like almost with the short hair that reached my chin. Days of diminished appetite were visible in the protruding bones on my hips. I've become a waif. My father would say that I looked more like Renee nowadays; beautiful when I smile, terrifyingly strong when I don't. He said that sometimes, he'd look at me and remember what she was like when she moved to the States. I guess the pain and the suffering on my face made me an eligible subject for one of Charlie's paintings…and I did.
It must've been quite an ego trip for him; to come here, find a simple, unsophisticated girl and crush her with the fascination of his domineering personality. He must've gone back to whatever hell he came from very pleased with himself. To his wife, a voice inside my head whispered. What was she like, the unsuspecting woman whom Edward betrayed without hesitation? I felt sorry for her.
I looked at my father and forced a smile.
"I want to go to college, Dad. Do you think I can get in?"
He grinned. "I'll do everything in my power to give you anything you want, child. I'll put in a call to Washington U. The Dean there owed me some favors."
Of course. Who would refuse the great, Charlie Swan?
For the first time in months, I felt like my life wasn't spinning out of control in the same orbit. I was going somewhere, granted in the direction of where he was, but I didn't care. The world may not be big for the two of us, but I refuse to hide here and live on a stand still.
I have a future; uncertain, yes, but a future nonetheless.
