Frustrations
"How much do you know, Isabella?" Alice inquired. The family had taken me to sit at the head of the large, oak table, with the obvious intention of finding out my capabilities. So I sat, staring at the tabletop, while the six who had no engagements elsewhere picked my brains for information. I knew they would be putting me into some kind of special programme at the school, for I knew nothing of what they suggested.
What on earth was pi supposed to mean? Why was this so important to them in mathematics? And while I was on the subject, why didn't they tell me what Pythagoras' Theorem was? They were doing their homework, showing me what they had to do, but still almost expecting me to know.
Like it was obvious.
Esme seemed to be a little bit more understanding. She read the confused looks on my face and cared enough to attempt to explain. But what was Edward's excuse? He could hear exactly what I was thinking and he sat there, carrying on with his work. I glared at his studious face. EDWARD!
He jumped in his seat, and looked in my direction before I turned to face Alice.
"I don't have the faintest idea of what you're talking about Alice, I'm sorry." She nodded sadly, going back to her work. "Don't you see why I'm so reluctant to go to school, Alice? Isn't it very obvious as you're trying to explain to me how one would use pie to find the area of a circle? What has PIE got a damned thing to do with it, anyway?" I slammed my hand on the table in frustration, storming out of the place and heading back to my own room.
Letting out a breathy sigh as I entered the calm blue of my room, I leapt onto the bed and lay back. I snarled in irritation, pressing my face into the softness of the pillow. If muffled the sound, thankfully; but I knew without a doubt that I could still be heard on the ground floor.
If I had wanted or needed to learn any of this, I would have! Aro had taught me addition and subtraction—nothing unnecessary. Nothing more and nothing less. The simple things. He had taught me to read, and write. That was all I had needed and wanted to know in the Guard. So why did humans need to learn any of the things they did now?
"They don't need half the stuff they learn, and they forget a lot of it. But that doesn't change that you have to learn it, if you want to blend in." I turned to meet Edward's eyes. He was cautious, and lingered in the doorway waiting to be allowed in or shooed away. "Also, they have the chance to go on and have steady jobs after they leave school. This is something my siblings and I don't get the chance to do, a lot of the time. We are too young, just as you are." Satisfied that he wouldn't be thrown out, Edward stepped further inside and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"And you're perfectly satisfied with sitting through hours upon hours of pointless work, to do a job that you'll never get the chance to do?" I asked honestly, if with a little sarcasm. What he said made sense, what he said was so right… but so wrong. It was unfair that we should be separate from the other students and that we should live as we do in schools forever and ever.
"I do what I have to." Edward smiled gently as he came to rest on the edge of the bed, sitting gingerly with his hands rested carefully on his knees. He didn't look at me, but nor anything else. He looked empty, and the smile on his face seemed to hold no worth. Edward was much better at hiding his feelings than I ever hoped to. Even though I had vowed to.
"Are you making a study of me, Isabella?" he said, grinning. "And you're wrong you know; you can't hide your feelings from anyone in this house while Jasper is around. Or me."
Now he looked at me.
"And school isn't as hard as all that, it's just that the first time will always be hardest." He put a cautious hand on my shin in an effort of comfort. "I know that my first day seemed impossible." A wistful grimace came onto his face. He squeezed his hand around me once.
"You'll be in a learning disabled class, Isabella. No-one will laugh. I promise. And you'll have lots of support. You'll have us to fend off any humans who come too close at lunch." Alice spoke in a rush at the doorway, short and sharp pauses in between each new point.
"Even better, just don't make me go," I murmured under my breath resentfully.
"Sadly that's not an option if you want to hang around here," Alice replied unhappily. "We all know how you feel, Isabella. But Carlisle knows it best. Why don't you ask him about it when he comes back?" With that, she was gone, her steps a staccato rhythm on the wooden panelled floorboards.
This I thought seemed like a reasonable idea.
"Carlisle will be back before midnight, which is in—" he peered up at the clock on my wall, "—about six hours." Edward smiled mutely before he too left the room; I guessed he was off to do more homework. And what did I have to do, but lay back on my bed? I could remember things I'd prefer to forget, the bittersweet memories with Iago in the Guard. The way he had protected me from the other vampires; and those faraway eyes, both were huge parts of who Iago was.
I did and I didn't want him back in my life, existence, mind. Of course he had already infected nigh on every memory I had, but that wasn't his fault. It was a result of the hundreds of years we had known each other. It was a result of how I had relied on him. I could be certain of our detachment if he hadn't shown such kindness to me, or if he had merely protected me from Lucian. He was my confidant and my companion for so long, I didn't know if I would ever let go of him if I didn't have some closure. If I never saw him again, if I did not see him even in my dying moments then I would die a lonely woman.
I hoped I would stay until Christmas, so I could see him happy and at peace. I found it hard to imagine Iago in the company of so many women however, as Aro had told me of the coven in Alaska. "The original succubus," he had hissed the 's' in reverence—it smacked of an experience between them but before my time. I had never bothered to ask. I wondered if he was with one of them, or with all of them. Did he love them? Did he love her? What made her more important than me?
Gah! It was useless. What good could come of these ridiculous thoughts? But he had hurt me with his words, and he had hurt me by leaving me. He was responsible for everything that went wrong after he left me. I blamed him for the mistakes and strange occurrences in the past hundred years. He made me see false things.
Him and him alone. This was his fault. He was the reason why I was so ill in the head; Iago had not tried to make me feel better about Ransley or Henry. He had done nothing! It was not money that was the root of all evil, but Iago! I hated him and I didn't want to see him EVER again!
I roared, climbing to my feet and punching the wall in anger. It quivered under my hand and I pulled my hand back to my face, covering my features in horror. What had I become? What sort of savage did he reduce me to? With my head in my hands, I curled up on the soft carpeted floor and dry-sobbed.
I only wanted them back.
I heard Carlisle's car roll into the garage just at the time Edward had said; the sound of the stuttering engine as it died out filled my ears. There was the sound of the keys being pulled out, the gathering of files and bags and then the lock of the door turning. I wished his steps would move faster.
"Isabella got herself into a state, Carlisle. Perhaps you could help her?" Edward murmured lowly at the foot of the stairs. Carlisle paused, I guessed to ask Edward a question in his head.
"She has a lot of issues surrounding Iago—yes, the very same—and she was struggling with the math we were doing earlier. She's not sure about how she will adjust to everything. And she has a lot of self-hatred over people called Ransley and Henry…" Edward paused this time. "Have you heard of them before, Carlisle?" He sounded cautious, as he should be, for pulling out my thoughts in that way! What right did he have to…?
I could feel my anger building again and stopped that thought in its tracks. Edward was concerned for me. He didn't want Carlisle to say the wrong thing. Yes, these were valid explanations.
"They're not names in my memory; most likely before my time, Edward. She was with the Volturi for a very long time as you will have probably heard in her thoughts."
I was tired of listening; I wanted to see what they were discussing. I turned my vision on the ground floor of the house, by the stairwell. Carlisle looked upset, heavy creases in his forehead making him look ages older than he was at the time of change. Edward on the other hand, looked downright distraught. I supposed this was because everything I felt and thought, he felt with the very same weight. Poor Edward.
"You had better go up to speak to her because I'm not sure what to say." Edward put his head in his hands, covering his face. With that Carlisle walked up to his office to set his work down, and then proceeded up the stairs towards my room.
Carlisle knocked three times on the wood of my door. I grumbled that he could come in, and so he did—turning the doorknob with care and silently going to sit on the sofa nearby. I wondered what his expression was, did he look disappointed? Was he concerned just as when he had spoke to Edward? To answer these thoughts, I turned my head to the side to see his face. He was leaning down to touch a hand to my back, wary eyes and a steady hand reminded me of no-one else I had met before.
He was so kind to me; I wondered what I had done to deserve it.
"Edward tells me you are under a lot of stress, and he says you feel useless and distraught over some things that happened before you met me." He paused his speech, searching for protest I supposed. "I'm not expecting an explanation but I would like to be able to help you with some of these issues. The maths work for one. And any other work you may encounter at school… I can help you with all of it Isabella. I went through the exact same things. I remember that we just weren't taught any of the things children are taught and retain for most of their lives today. I would think that a child of ten years old today knows more about maths than a common shopkeeper did when we were alive.
"It was all new to me when I first started looking into education, started becoming interested in joining the medical profession. I know. So please don't censor yourself, ask of the family whatever you like. It's probably very difficult for you to swallow your pride and admit that someone not even a quarter of your age knows more than you do," he chuckled at that. "But that is just how things are today. I'm very sorry for it."
I sighed, agreeing with almost everything he had said. I bit my lip, considering the thought of how much young people knew these days. I knew that the change was drastic. But I also knew most of the people in the Cullen family had encountered the same difficulties over the years. Realistically, I knew they wouldn't judge me. But it still took all of my courage, and my entire throat to swallow my pride.
I looked up to Carlisle, a small smile on my face to let him know I was OK. "I heard your conversation with Edward, Carlisle," I murmured into the carpet. "It is Iago who drives me to points of madness. I really hope I didn't damage your wall." With a grimace, I rose to my feet and checked the feel of the wall where I had punched it. It was cracked, but no real structural damage had come to it. Thank goodness for that.
Timidly, I turned to face Carlisle with a sorry look on my face. In return, he reached out a hand to me as a show of peace and I took it readily. He drew me into his side, where I couldn't see his face. Why did he hide it? I pushed my head up to glimpse his expression, and he looked so… hurt. I wondered if something terrible had happened in his work today.
"Carlisle?" I whispered. He turned his head down, and his eyes were glassy, his mouth downturned. "What's wrong?" He only scrunched up his mouth, and then looked straight ahead into the forest. But when I tried to sit up, his arm was like steel around my middle so I couldn't move away from him. "Please, Carlisle," I whimpered, pushing a hand up to turn his face around again.
A shadow appeared in the doorway; it was the figure of Esme and her own face was lighted with worry. She strode in and took Carlisle's face in her hands while his jaw clenched and unclenched beneath them. Esme looked to me for explanation, wanting communication from someone.
"He is… very upset about how Isabella feels," a voice called from the ground floor. "He wants to help her but he knows that he can't really do anything to make it better. It frustrates him." Edward then also appeared in the doorway, one hand in the pocket of his trousers and another lying limp at his side. He seemed to want to do something with it but wasn't sure how.
It was at that point Carlisle broke out of his thoughts and responded to Esme's coaxing and reaching. It was only then that his hold on me was released and I able to console him properly. It seemed like Carlisle had done nothing but console me since I arrived here, and that pained me. I didn't want him to be my caregiver or my father—I wanted him as my friend with the good times there alongside the times where he helped me at my lows. Friendship had two sides to it and right now, he was my friend. I wasn't his.
But it didn't make sense for him to care so much, already. Just as I had thought before, we weren't yet the best of friends—we did not have the connection I'd had with Ransley. And still, I feel sure of my own great devastation if something should happen to Carlisle. Where would I go then? Perhaps this was a connection not by growth; but by strength. Maybe, in the deep recesses of mine and his minds, we were meant to be together. A connection so strong that neither of us, I didn't think, could walk away from.
Of course, this was all ludicrous, but I could dream.
"You could be onto something, Isabella," Edward said quickly, before the thought could escape. "It's not entirely unlikely. There's something similar between Carlisle and myself, and Carlisle and Esme. Because really, isn't Carlisle all of our fathers… at least in some capacity." I cocked my head to the side, considering. "I think the change is something so personal, we will always cling to the vampire responsible. We will always feel a pull back to them." Edward came to sit on the bed across from me. "Just a thought."
I turned to Carlisle, to see what he thought of what Edward had just explained. He looked to be trying to piece what Edward had said together to find out what the original thought was. A beat passed before understanding came into his eyes.
"I think I know what you're speaking of, Edward. The blood relation between vampires?"
I found myself cutting him off.
"Near to that, just the presence of another vampire during the change can create a tie between them so strong that time cannot crush it." I felt silly saying it now… but then, why did I feel so guilty about how things ended with Henry? I felt sure I hated him at the time, but now six hundred years later, I was still regretting the last things I had said to him. The final words I had hissed through my teeth; you won't know what hit you until it does…
Carlisle nodded in agreement, a slight smile on his lips. He took Esme's hand in his and pulled her onto the sofa between us. "It's entirely possible."
Another beat passed between our small group before Edward's voice sliced through the silence. "Do you want help with some of the school things, now or later?" Inwardly, I sighed in exasperation and exhaustion. Over six hundred years old and I had to learn all of this useless maths and science that I would never have any use for, in the whole world in the next thousand years that I might live. Yet, I needed to know it in order to blend in.
I would do it for Carlisle.
A/N: This has to be the most ridiculous and appalling gap I have ever had. I am so sorry. :O If you're still with me, thank you very much!
