Ch. 8 - Differences

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
- A Color of the Sky, by Tony Hoagland

"… Edward?" I looked up, shocked at seeing Wren standing at the other end of the piano well into the early hours of the next day before dawn broke. Maybe what surprised me the most was the fact that she wasn't looking at me angrily, she looked anxious actually.

"Yes?" I asked, my hands never leaving the keys.

She swallowed and my hands fumbled remembering that night eighty years ago when her throat moved just like that, and recalling what I had wanted to do to her when it had. "Why do you want to get to know me?" Wren inquired.

… What?

I didn't understand. Had I exhausted her with my persistence to the point of concession? But looking at her, I realized this was no concession. Wren was looking for a specific answer, she was testing me, trying to determine if my intentions for wanting to get to know her weren't merely because I was her sire. Would it make her feel better if I told her I was driven by guilt? Or would she rather hear that it was because of something I couldn't explain, that I was drawn to her.

I took a breath to answer, but she stopped me, "And I swear if you're going to tell me that it's because you want to 'make up' for the eighty years you didn't know I existed, then I will turn around, walk back upstairs and shut myself in my room until everyone comes home on Monday morning."

I laughed despite myself, but didn't answer immediately. I tried to read her mind, but there was nothing but silence; no poems, no rhymes. If I knew what she wanted to hear it would make this infinitely easier. Would she accept if I answered her question with one of my own?

"Depends on the question," she answered my unspoken thought with a smirk.

"Why don't you want me to know you?"

"A lot of wards don't believe their sires have the right to know them after what they took. They resent and hate their sires for what they did," she replied immediately. It didn't really answer my question, but I still understood.

I looked down, "Do youhate me?"

I didn't know that I wanted to hear the answer to my question. I wasn't sure how it would affect me if Wren said she hated me. If she hated me, there was no way I'd ever get close to her, Alice's visions be damned. It was nerve racking, the short silence that ensued because I didn't know how she would answer until, finally, she sighed, "No, Edward, I don't hate you."

Thank you.

I closed my eyes tightly, recognizing what a gift she had just given me by telling me that she didn't hate me when she had every right to. I had taken her life from her and although I had (unknowingly) given her a new one, it would never compare to her human life. She'd had a life, a family, a job and in a single night I had taken all of that from her and given her nothing in return.

My circumstances were different, my human life had been over. My mother and father had both died and if I had somehow survived my illness, I had nothing to go back to. Carlisle hadn't taken anything from me when he changed me, but had given me so much more.

"So, why do you want to get to know me?" Wren asked again, leaning against the piano. "And please don't lie to me."

"Well, it would be a lie if I said that part of it wasn't out of guilt. But the larger part is that you're so open with my family and yet so closed off with me and I wonder why. Everything about you makes me wonder why, and I want the answers to those questions," I answered. "And it's frustrating that you're trying to hinder me so vivaciously from quenching my curiosity."

"Curiosity killed the cat, Edward," Wren warned.

I smirked, "Ah, but it was satisfaction that brought it back."

Wren laughed once as she rounded the end of the piano and then came and sat beside me on the bench, something I didn't expect her to do. From the way she had been acting toward me, I was surprised when she stayed in the same room as me for more than ten minutes. It seems I had given her an answer that she liked even if it wasn't the one she was looking for. Lifting her hand, she delicately pressed a few notes from the piano and for a glorious second, I thought she might sing, but she lowered her hand back to her lap instead.

"Before you came back, before I knew you were my sire -- when you were simply Alice's brother, I didn't want to know you," she admitted quietly, as if it shamed her.

The tone she was speaking in, the way she deliberately kept her eyes on the piano keys, I knew she was about to tell me something personal. Maybe the reason she disliked me so wasn't simply because I was her sire, perhaps it was something deeper. I prayed that it was something we could get around.

"Why?" I pressed.

She took a deep breath and held it in her chest for a moment before releasing it. "Alice told me about… your… Bella. Your blood singer…"

I tensed, going completely rigid beside Wren. I was suddenly livid. Why would Alice tell her about Bella? The pain came unexpectedly, stretching across my entire body, cinching my chest and strangling my un-beating heart. My thoughts were rampant with the whys, wherefores and when's. What gave Alice the right to tell Wren something so personal about me? And for that matter, what right did Wren have to bring it up?

I didn't realize I was shaking until I felt Wren's hand on my arm. I turned my glare in her direction, but she didn't shrink back like I expected her to. "Edward, please…" she begged, meeting my glare with a pleading gaze.

Her eyes hadn't changed one bit from when she was a human. True, they were no longer the blue they had once been, but they were exactly the same. And for a second time, it was the look in her eyes and the expression on her face that spared her my wrath.

I nodded, trying my best to swallow my anger while I told her, "Go on."

Wren took her hand off my arm and returned it to her lap, "When Alice told me, I didn't want to know you because I was… jealous."

This cooled my anger quickly being replaced with my confusion, "Jealous?"

She nodded, "Yes, of your control, to have been with someone whose blood pulsed specifically for you and for you to resist it for so long and not heed the siren's call."

"Why would you be envious of my control?" I asked, but she didn't answer. Wren just looked at me and suddenly, horribly, I understood, "You killed your blood singer."

Wren breathed a harsh laugh, "Killed seems like such a tame word for what I did to him." She took a breath that filled her frame and let it out, sagging as it left her lungs, "His name was Michele, he was a painter I met in France."

"What happened?"

"…. I was doing well until one day about six months after we met. I was in his studio and he was making the frame for his next canvas painting, and he missed the nail with the hammer and hit his finger instead; the fingernail split right open. I was all the way across the room when it happened, but as soon as he saw his own blood he knew he was dead. I was sobbing as I drained him and all the while he kept telling me that he forgave me and that he loved me until he couldn't speak anymore," Wren told me quietly.

Now I understood her envy. She believed that if she had better control she either would've had enough restraint to leave the room, or worse, had enough self-possession to draw back in time and change him.

Selfishly, I wondered if Wren would be sitting beside me if she had succeeded in changing him.

"The worst thing about it," she continued, driving me from my self-centered reverie, "is that all these years later, I can still taste his blood in my mouth. It will not go away, even now just thinking about it, I feel like I haven't hunted in days."

I turned toward her in shock because I knew that feeling; I knew that feeling exactly. Wren's blood still tasted fresh in my mouth whenever I thought about it, even for a second. I remembered the immediate relief the first taste brought to my burning throat. I remembered how the scent of the blood of the other humans around me had become tolerable while hers burned in my nose. Perhaps worst of all, I remembered the way her body felt against mine, the way she clung to me.

There was a distinct difference between the first time I saw and smelled Wren and the first time I saw and smelled Bella. Bella had been my true blood singer because the scent of her blood affected me worse than the scent of Wren's. But I hadn't wanted Bella the same way I had wanted Wren, that came later, with Wren it was immediate. If it hadn't been for the scent of her blood, I would've seen Bella as unremarkable as every other human, but Wren had captured my attention before I caught the scent of her.

Briefly, I wondered if I had still been human when I met Wren all those years ago, if I would've ended up with her. Had she been my human soul mate, the woman I was supposed to marry, have children with and die beside? If so, what did that make her now that we weren't human?

What if Wren's accidental change wasn't an accident at all, but fate?

Oookkkay, that's chapter 8!
And we find out that Wren had a blood singer, but sadly killed him.

Next chapter is the continuation of the convo at the piano in Wren's POV.
(Does anyone notice that I try and keep Edwards and Wren's POV's somewhat even?
Like if I do two in his, then I follow with two in hers?)

Uhhmmm.... OH!
I have updated my homepage, there is now a character concept of Wren, including some
information about her as well as some more information on this story! GO CHECK IT OUT
THE LINK IS ON MY BIO PAGE!!

Annd now onto reviews!! I would love to thank: twialleyholic-OCD, A Dahlia For Bree,
Mrs. Cullen- VAMPIRE xoxo, Isabella M.C., justanothergaarafangurl, Edward'sGirlForEternity,
and w8ing4rain for reviewing, thanks SO MUCH guys, it really means a lot and keep it up!!

OH! ONE MORE THING THAT I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT!!

I got a review not that long ago that said this: "...why is bella dead?? ...
if you made wren bella, then you would have SO many more people reading this storyy!
not many people like another character with edward" and I would like to address it...
First off, Bella IS NOT DEAD! Second, I didn't just "make wren bella" because I hate Bella
and like my character more. Third, I don't care if more people would read the story if I did that
I really don't write for other people, I write for me and if people happen to like what I write,
then that's fantastic!

Anyway, please review!? :D

-(gxr)-