We stay in the deep north of Canada for eight months, we passed the time with Jasper and Peter teaching me how to fight, Alice and I making jewelry or just playing like kids. Hide and Seek, Cops and Robbers, all kids games that leave us in hysterics. I have the odd feeling this is the first time I was able to do this, act young and free and just, play. I want to explore more of the world though, my mind is so vast and everything stimulates it and I want to know more, see more, experience more, so we go south, slowly from small villages to bigger towns and work our way up to the excitement and over stimulation of the cities. Jasper is convinced I won't kill anyone, that I'm a miracle newborn with super powers of control and wont have any problems with my blood lust. My thirst out there seems second to my curiosity and he and Ali have both had to remind me to hunt or I forget the dry ache of my throat altogether. Humans do smell sweeter, more appetizing than the musty smell of the animals we hunt but I can mostly ignore the thirst. At first I have to stop breathing and then I'm ok but slowly, it gets better, easier to ignore or push aside in favor of all the sights and sounds and smells surrounding me.
I kill someone in Montreal at ten months. I want to run and hide in the remotest corner of the world and never leave. They are all very understanding and I don't feel as bad since both Jasper and Alice had been struggling with the amount of spilled blood at the accident and I felt a lot better when it turned out the man I ate had been driving drunk and killed the woman and her young son in the other car. I would still always remember his name from the news, Eric Harden, and his bloodied face. Jasper says he would probably have died from his injuries anyways but I still counted it as a failure on my part and the worst day of my new existence. I had killed a man, drank his blood and loved it.
On the other hand I did refrain from killing the drunk bitch that groped Peter in a bar we went to and believe me, that was the hardest thing I've ever tested my control with, you know besides the bloody accident where I lost myself for a few minutes. Fucking slut had her hands rubbing him down in full view of an entire crowd and he was mine. Ok the crazy possessive bitch living behind the wall in my head could get a little loud sometimes. Once I told Jasper about her, he seemed to think it was my new born personality I'd somehow locked up, my vampire side, he says his demon is locked tight in a cage and it took a lot to get the fucker in there but I just woke up with mine all locked up tight in the corner of my head, except that one time, that one horrible time she got out and I ate someone. Guess super control really is a thing. Peter thinks its hilarious when she shows through, or "fan-fuckin-tastic" when she slips out when I'm horny. Blood, sex and blood are on my mind a lot, but everything is new and beautiful and I explore the world and everything in it carefully.
We have super speed and strength but endless time so what I find the most amazing is how slow we get to be. We run for the sheer joy of it but when we walk, we stroll, when we do anything it is carefully and precise and we take our time. Spend an hour staring a butterfly, no problem when it floats away I can move on to picking wild flowers, meticulously looking for and only picking the prettiest ones or lay back in the grass and watch the clouds float past letting time slip away. I always thought Alice worked making the jewelry we had at my pace and thought she must be bored sometimes but now, now I can spend twice as long on each piece, with no sense of urgency about anything, I grew careless with time, entire days could slip by with the only things to fill them, dancing in a meadow with Alice or walking through the woods or making love to Peter.
I email Charlie and Renee every once in a while, they are as bad as I am and though there is the we miss you so visit soon messages, they slowly get farther and farther apart until every couple weeks has become every couple months.
We left Canada after the slip I had with the car accident victim and moved south, skipping over the United States and Mexico to explore South America. I sort of remember Peter once telling me as a human that he'd spent time there and would show me all the places he'd been and I loved that he was keeping to that as if the offhand comment to human me were a promise.
Alice, Jasper, Peter and I are more than family, at this point they are like extra limbs and while I freely remind Ali and Jazz that I love them with words or flashes of emotion pushed at Jasper, I have yet to say the words to Peter. I know that I do love him, and I am pretty secure in the idea that he loves me too, we've just never talked about it. Sometimes I wonder if it's because he doesn't think I'm his forever but then the bitch in my head gets louder, growling mine, mine, mine and we go search him out to remind ourselves that, at least here and now, he is and he loves me.
He does talk more, laugh more, joke more, play more, I notice it about Jasper too and when I ask him, Jasper says it's partly because he doesn't have to live with the constant battle not to eat me anymore. I remind him that Peter didn't ever want to eat me and he just laughed and sent me a wave of amusement, "We're happy darlin. This is Pete and I, happy." I hug him because I'm happy too.
Alice explores everything with me, as if she's new to it all too, delighting in every little thing, she says its because its like she is seeing the world like I am, seeing it through me, "Besides," she chuckles, "I'm happy, everything is beautiful and bright and new when you're happy." Alice is good at being happy, she makes all of us happy too, delighting in anything from playing a new game to buying a new dress to a new view of the sunset. Life is beautiful and good and I am free in a way I never even thought to imagine.
There are latent human parts of my mind that make me scream and leap away from a snake or spider, things that throw Peter into fits of laughter. I love his laughter so I forgive him for laughing at me and usually just plead with him to kill it for me, pouting and playing damsel in distress even as I'm reminded I'm a vampire and no creepy crawly venomous beast can hurt me.
It's way out here that I see them again, Carlisle and Esme. We had wandered in South America for eleven months, crisscrossing the continent as we explored and then moved to a little outside Rio de Janeiro. Itatiaia National Park is close for Ali, Jazz and I to hunt and there is a buffet of criminals for Peter in the city. There is also music for Jasper, the theater for Peter, shopping for Ali and History for me. There is movies, museums, sports and dancing; I love dancing as a vampire, so does Ali and Peter loves anything let's him hold me indecently close in public and Jasper loves anything that makes us that happy so he doesn't mind the burn of his thirst, he says he's so wrapped up in our happy, its barely there on those nights and when I watch him dance with Ali or we all dance together, I believe him because he is happy and it leaks out of him though his smile and laugh as much as his gift.
We've been in the city a while when it happens. We went dancing at a club and are walking the beach, well Ali and I are still twirling and dancing, the boys are walking slowly behind us, Peter is playing music on his phone and Jasper is sending us out waves of amusement and giddiness and it reminds me of the feeling of being tipsy when I was human.
We're laughing and dancing and playing, kicking up the water as it splashes up to our ankles and I turn and run at Peter, jumping up into his arms for a kiss while Jasper twirls Alice. She stops abruptly and stares out into the distance, Peter lets me down and we wait for the vision to pass. When it clears I can't tell if she's happy or worried as she turns to look at me, "They're here."
"Who?" I can't even begin to guess what she's talking about, why she's looking at me when she says this and not Jasper or Peter. In the two years we've been together it's always just been the four of us.
"Esme and Carlisle." She whispers their names and long buried and foggy memories of my human life flow through my brain.
"Oh." I can't think of what to say, I'm not even sure how I feel.
"They'll be here in just a minute." She whispers.
"Ok." I whisper back, still not sure how to react. It doesn't occur to me until we see them to ask if they know I'm like them now. I don't need to ask though, their expressions clearly show their shock as they come out from the shadows of a hotel onto the beach and see us.
"Bella?" Esme's voice is almost silent.
"Hello." I wonder if maybe vampires can go into shock, I think I have and maybe they have too because they've stopped where they came onto the beach and we are still standing with the waves lapping up onto out bare feet, staring at each other and my mind is completely silent.
Peter wraps an arm around my waist and Carlisle seems to recover first, "How?"
"Jasper." I turn to smile at my brother and he sends me a wave of affection.
"When?" Esme is looking from him to me and back and her look is sad, disappointed as she gazes at him, "You attacked her. How could you do this? Why would you have gone back?"
"We never left." Alice informs them.
"He didn't abandon me, you don't just leave people you love, without even a goodbye." Peter's arm squeezes me gently but I don't need the comfort, I'm not angry, I'm not sad, I'm numb. Loving them is a distant memory, the pain of their leaving a foggy shadow of loss and sorrow. It's not for me that the thing behind the wall in my head is rearing her bad tempered head, it's for Jasper, there is a line of tension in his back that wasn't there before, the smallest curve in his shoulder, her words have hurt him and I don't like it, the part of me behind the wall, the one that only got out the once to feed on the man in Montreal, she's livid.
They don't seem to know what to say to that but Esme shakes her head and even without Jasper's gift I can feel the disappointment in her as she looks at him, "Why disrespect your brothers wishes, hurt him like this, how could you be so selfish?"
I don't fight it as the wall comes crashing down in my head. Peter feels the change in me instantly and the arm wrapped around me in comfort is now a restraint as I hiss and snarl at her like the wild demonic creature I am. I don't fight his hold though and Jasper is sending me waves of calm and love.
"Edward was selfish and mean and wrong. It was Bella who was hurt, Bella who was abandoned, left behind by the boy and the family who claimed to love her." Alice is the one to speak up, her eyes holding Esme's steadily. "Bella is my best friend, my sister. I said from the very beginning she would be, that she would be one of us. Jasper stayed, despite how much he blamed himself for losing control to your bloodlust, yours and Edwards and mine and all of ours. He stayed because I did, because I wont ever abandon my sister. We stayed and kept her safe from Victoria, we helped her heal from what Edward did to her and we let her make her own choices in life, including this. She chose it and Jasper changed her, because without her blood soaking the room from being tossed into glass plates, without six other hungry vampires flooding him with blood lust, Jasper did have the control to bite her and to stop and Bella gave him that chance, trusted him to stop."
It's quiet for a minute, "I…" Esme begins, she hesitates and tries again, "I didn't mean, I'm sorry Jasper, of course you wouldn't hurt Bella on purpose, we know her birthday wasn't your fault, it was all of us, we knew that, Edward knew that, that's why he asked us to leave, to let her live her life."
"It wasn't his decision to make, not for Bella, not for you and not for us. You let him make it for you, we didn't, we let Bella make her own choice and she chose us, chose this life." HIs voice is low, wounded and firm at the same time.
"Of course." Esme concedes the point and the argument.
"When was the change?" Carlisle changes the topic, diplomatic as ever.
"Two and a half years last month." Jasper informs them, later I'll remember to be surprised we'd been living in Rio three months already, now though its all I can focus on to put the wall back up in my head especially because Jasper is still tense and I can feel anger and anxiety in the lines of Peter's body as he holds me to him.
"We spent the summer on the island, thought we'd try to get Edward to come home this winter." Esme informs us gently, "Carlisle's taken over a private clinic in a lovely town in France. Rosalie and Emmett have even decided to come home." I know its meant as an invitation but none of us says anything in response.
"Go take Bella to hunt Captain." Jasper finally breaks the silence. I know he can feel the beast in me still raging, I am unable to calm it while my family is upset, while there is that line of tension in Jasper's back and in Peter's arm around my waist.
I feel rather than see Peter nod and he's pulling me away, so much stronger than me but I don't fight against his hold. I don't want to be here, I don't know how I feel about seeing them and I'm not sure I'm ready to figure it out. I just want to be away, to forget the confusing half remembered love and pain in my human life. I want to calm the bitch in my head still raging against the line of tension they put in Jasper's form and the anxiety in Alice's eyes, I need her to stop raging against the wall so I can think, so I can decide how I really feel.