EPOV
"All of our futures just disappeared." For a second, I was simply thankful for the distraction. I was such a masochist. I understood my need to see Bella, but did my subconscious really need to conjure up that image? Not only did it cause me pain to think of what could be and how much I still wanted that, but I had been unable to feel her lips on mine. It was simply a reminder that she wasn't really there. She was just a figment of my imagination existing simply because of my inability to move on.
But then Alice's words registered, and I was immediately up.
"What's the last thing you see before we disappear?" I questioned rapidly. She focused, and I saw the vision as it happened. For a moment, it was centered on the clock, and then it shifted over to show us all sitting on the couches in the living room, debating over something. The doorbell rang, and we all turned to look at the door. For a reason we couldn't see, we all appeared confused, but Carlisle got up and opened it, and the future went black. The whole thing rang with the clarity of nearness.
"Is it the same for all of us?"
"Yes." She replied. "I have no idea what's on the other side of that door, but I know it's going to kill us. The only thing I don't get is why we're still opening the door even now that I've had the vision. Do they say something that makes us open the door?" That was a tricky part of Alice's visions. There was no sound. We could all read lips, so it was easy to see what they were saying, but if someone was not visible-say, behind a door-we couldn't hear what they were saying.
We both looked at the clock, and then inhaled in shock. The vision was obviously going to take place today from the clarity of it. But the clock in Alice's vision had said 3:26.
It was 3:15.
"Okay, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but the rest of us have little to no clue as to what's going on right now." Emmett interrupted our silent exchange that was taking place on a frequency even lower than mind reading.
Alice turned to the rest of them and we all moved to the living room as she explained all of our theories and exactly what had taken place in the vision. For a second, everyone was quiet while they processed the information. I closed my eyes to find out if Bella was doing, but for the first time in a long time, she wasn't in the same room as me. I considered looking for her, but then remembered that she was an image projected by my head, and she wouldn't be off hiding in another room. If I wasn't seeing her, she wasn't here.
Besides, my family was coming out of their thoughts, and we were now all debating over what to do now. In a second, I realized we were reenacting the vision, and I glanced at the clock. 3:25. It was almost time.
Just as the last thought escaped, the clock switched to 3:26 and there was a knock on the door. Everyone froze and turned towards it at the last second. I closed my eyes, hoping to spend my last few seconds with Bella. I was confused to see her standing at the door, completely unconcerned, but I took comfort in it. If she could be strong, I could be too. Then the voice came through the door.
"We need to talk to you bloodsuckers." The gruff tone carried easily and was accompanied by the unmistakable stench of werewolf. Carlisle started to walk forward, hesitated, war raging on his face, and then continued all the way to the door, a strange kind of resolve on his face.
"Are you insane? Do you want to die?" Rose cried out in protest before he could open the door, but it went unheard. The door swung out, and three werewolves, shaking with anger but still in human form, came in. They walked as if the ground was composed of hot coals. Constantly moving so that it couldn't burn their feet. They didn't make any immediate move to annihilate us, and while that didn't make any sense, we all relaxed slightly.
The wolves wasted no time beating around the bush.
"What did you guys do to Bella?" We all stared blankly at them. They knew Bella? And even if they did know Bella, why did they think we had done anything? Alice looked a little surprised, but then she seemed to remember something.
"Bella did mention she hung out with you guys." Every head in the room turned to her.
"And why did you think this was unnecessary to mention until this moment?" My voice was ice, but I couldn't find the strength or inclination to melt it.
"It was the excuse she used when I asked how she knew what our powers were. I was going to mention it, but then I figured that it was just a way to cover up the fact that she had studied up on us before the Volturi sent her to watch us. I didn't think it was important, and we were already depressed enough, I didn't want to make anything worse."
By now, we had forgotten about the wolves, but when I looked over, they were peering at us like we were some interesting species of alien speaking a foreign language that they had learned long ago, and maybe, if they listened hard enough, they would remember enough to understand us. They had stopped shifting from foot to foot. Our conversation consumed all of their focus.
"I'm sorry." Sam, the leader, was the first to attempt to speak. Arguments ceased for the time being. "If you could please explain exactly what's going on, and where Bella is, it would make this a whole lot easier."
Alice glanced at me to see if I would speak, but then started herself when she saw I wasn't that healed yet.
"Bella was part of the Volturi. She came here to spy on our family and placed a false memory in everyone's head saying she was Charlie's daughter. That's her power. Anyway, she stayed for a while and then, when she got enough information, she just left. She didn't even bother to erase the memory of her. She prefers to let us all suffer."
They all exchanged a loaded glace that they didn't spare a thought to, so I had no idea what it meant. Then, Sam spoke up again. "How did you manage to figure all this out. I'm sure the Volturi doesn't take kindly to their secrets being shared." There was an ironic and mocking edge to his voice, but it was so faint that I was sure I was imagining it.
"She left us a letter." Esme spoke now, her voice carefully neutral to hide the pain that came from reliving this memory.
"Can we see this letter?" I raced up to my room where I kept the letter in a drawer in my dresser. Grabbing the well-worn paper in my hand, I raced back down before the painful thing could burn a hole in my hand. Sam snatched it up and sniffed it, assuring himself that it was from Bella. Then he opened it up, read it, chuckled once in his head, and promptly blocked his thoughts.
Wondering at his peculiar behavior, I watched as he turned around, tapped the werewolf behind him-Jacob-on his hand twice, and placed the letter in the waiting palm. The procedure was repeated with Jacob, and then the other wolf-Seth-in precisely the same order. Wolf reads note, chuckles once or twice, and then blocks their thoughts from me.
"May we come back in a few moments? We need to talk this over with everyone. We'll be back in a second." Carlisle nodded, his thoughts questioning, and they ran out the door and into the forest. I closed my eyes to look for Bella, but she wasn't here right now.
We went back into the living room and I was soon requested to explain exactly what had just occurred, with the all knowing perspective only a mind reader could have.
"They know something we don't. That's about all I know. When they first came in, they were all thinking something along the lines of 'I'm going to kill them once I find out what they did to Bella.' They didn't think about anything else. They were really just confused when they heard about the letter, and when they read it, every single one of them would read it, laugh, and block their thoughts. They're very good at it too."
So we all sat there waiting for them to come back, and it didn't take that long. Only a minute or two after they left, they were knocking on the door and letting themselves.
"We have to get Bella back." That was all they said. I closed my eyes to see what imaginary Bella thought of that. She was snarling at the wolves and her eyes were blazing. Seconds after I opened my eyes again, a vase flew through the air, hitting Sam full in the face. The hundred-dollar glass shattered and sliced his face in multiple places. We all looked in the direction it had come from, but there was no one there.
The only thing that kept my family from going into shock was the hysterical laughter that sounded from the wolves. One by one, we turned to look at him with the kind of smiles you reserved for the clinically insane, all the while exchanging panicked glances. The cuts on Sam's face had already healed, and he was bent double on the ground laughing.
They soon stopped, but the looks on our faces got them started again, and it wasn't until a couple minutes later that we were able to talk to them again.
"Okay, would someone like to explain what exactly was so funny just now?" Emmett demanded. He hated being out of the loop. For once, I didn't blame him. The wolves didn't let their guard down for a minute. I had no idea what was going on, and it was a strange feeling for me.
"She was just, so angry." Jacob spoke, and this sent them into another chorus of laugher that was shorter, but still irksome.
"Who's she? And how did a vase fly through the air like that?" Carlisle was speaking now.
"It was all Bella." Seth said offhandedly, as if we should already know this. As if it were common sense instead of a foreign language. We all just sat there dumbly, waiting for further information that could make any of this make sense. "She's here, you know."
Esme shot a glance at me, and I stared back. It wasn't possible. There was no way. It had to all be some sort of coincidence.
"What do you mean?" Esme asked, sounding much calmer than either of us felt.
"I think you know exactly what we mean. Or, at least, he does." Jacob pointed at me, and the rest of the family turned as if somehow controlled by his finger.
"Do you know what he's talking about, Edward?" Alice.
I went to respond, but was interrupted by Seth. "Oh, so you're Edward? Sorry. I wasn't here when we renewed the treaty and all that. Then again, I should have figured you were Edward. You're just the kind of person she would fall for, from what I know of her." He was oblivious to all the warning glances that Sam and Jacob were shooting him, and to the pain that was shooting through my heart at that very moment. She never fell for me, and she never would. She played on all of our emotions, and then left before anyone could really figure her out.
Alice spoke again. "Well, now that that's been established, I'll repeat my earlier question. Do you know what he's talking about Edward?"
"I don't know. I think I might, but it could also all be a coincidence. I never thought much of it before."
"Please just spit it out. What the heck are you talking about?" Emmett butted in.
"The first time I saw Bella was at the school dance. We danced together, actually. I was trying to let her go at the time. It failed, but I figured that she was some conjured up by my imagination to make it easier, or harder. I never really figured that out. Then, she was gone for two days, but she came back when I was sitting at the piano. I was playing the song she showed me when Alice came down and made me come up and look at designs with her. Bella followed.
"After that, she was almost always with me. Any time I looked for her, I could see her. She went to school with me. She went home with me. We went hunting together. She was everywhere. I only just told Esme about her today."
"Wait. You've been hanging out with Bella for the past week and you haven't bothered to tell us? That isn't healthy Edward. You know she was just playing with you. Why would that change? You need to stop seeing her, before this gets even worse." Alice really was concerned about me. I could feel it. Appparently, though, I hadn't explained everything as well as I had thought.
"It's not like that. I can see her, she's just not actually here."
"Oh thanks, that clears everything up." Her voice was thick with sarcasm, and I could feel the anger radiating off her. Also, underneath her anger and concern, I could sense a thought that she was trying desperately to hide. She was jealous. Even though she knew just how dangerous it was to be hanging out with Bella now, she wished that Bella had shown up for her instead of me. She wanted to see her sister again.
"Look, Alice. I'm insane, okay? That's the problem here. I see Bella in my head whenever I close my eyes. She follows me around. She does everything with me. In my head, she still loves me. I know that she doesn't really, but I don't think my mind can totally accept that yet."
The wolves were standing there, obviously not fitting in, until Seth walked right up to me and patted me on the back. "Don't worry, my friend. You're not as insane as you think. In fact, if everyone here just closes their eyes…" He was rudely interrupted by another flying vase that seemed oddly attracted to his face. It shattered and cut him, dragging a curse through his lips.
"Chill out! It's for the best. You know you want it too." He called out, and the rest of us stared at him like he was the insane one, instead of me. He seemed to be talking to thin air. However, thin air seemed incapable of talking, though not of throwing things. After the vase came a plate, then a lamp, and finally a chair. Still, he kept talking.
"Don't even try to disagree…I've really known you for about a month, and I rarely got to see you even then, and even I know that it's what you want…you're not listening to reason. They need you here and you know it…I don't care whatever ridiculous reason you have for going away. You know that they might come to ask for help anyway. One touch and it's all over." Even through all of this seemingly mindless babble, he kept his thoughts blocked. I had no idea what he was talking about, or who he was talking to. It irked me to no end.
"Fine. You obviously won't see reason." He turned to us, smiled an apologetic smile that just made us more confused, and started to explain. "As I was saying before, if you all just close your eyes, I'm sure each and every one of you will see a very livid Bella standing in this very room." All of us closed our eyes, albeit cautiously. I still saw her, but Seth was right. She was even angrier than last time, a towering fury streaming out of every pore. Screaming growls tore through her lips, and I realized that this was the first time I had heard her make any noise when in this form, excepting the time at the dance. I had just assumed that she couldn't, and that the dance was just a special occasion.
I opened my eyes again, and saw the wolves staring at us with longing. Wish I could do that. A single thought slipped through Jacob's defense, and I huffed in annoyance when it did nothing to clear up the situation. Glancing at my family, I saw that they were all basically in the same position. They were leaning forward, closed eyes squinting. They had the same expression I had seen on a human's face when they had just eaten a piece of chocolate or other delicacy. There was a look of pure happiness and bliss on their faces. Even Rose looked happy, though not nearly as happy as the rest of them.
Seth started talking again, and they reluctantly opened their eyes and focused on the wolf in front of them.
"She isn't actually there, but she is seeing everything. And hearing. And even feeling everything. It's as if she's actually here, we just can't see her unless our eyes are closed. Don't ask how this is, or why. We really don't know, we just know that it is. You can ask her about it next time you see her. Now, all we really need is a plan."
For a second, everyone stood around, thoughts whirling in their head and waiting for someone else to take charge.
"I think it would be best to have one of the wolves to lead us this time, as they know infinitely more than we do at the moment." Carlisle was the one to break the silence, and soon the rest of us were nodding along. Sam stepped forward.
"I think I would be best to lead in this particular situation-" He was interrupted by Rosalie.
"Wait a minute. Really? All that just occurred really was that we all closed our eyes and saw Bella in the room with us, and we just assume that it cancels out everything she told us? Am I the only one that needs a little proof before we go traipsing off after a girl that a, told us to stay away from her or we'd die and b, might not want us coming after he anyway? It seems a little sudden, and a lot impulsive. Please, I'm not against going to help her if she needs it, but I honestly don't think she needs it, or wants it. I need a reason to go after the girl who put my family into depression for over a month now, and who broke my brother's heart."
No one was really shocked by her outburst, more by the fact that none of us had even considered that. Were we really about to go run off without any idea of what was true and what wasn't?
"I'm amazed no one spoke up sooner, honestly." Sam said, pulling a book out of a backpack behind him. "Of course, I was prepared, but I wasn't going to bring it up if no one mentioned it, because it's definitely going to waste time." He then walked over and plopped down on the couch, placing the book on the coffee table in front of him. We all gathered around to see exactly what he was doing.
The first page showed a picture of a little baby with a fringe of black hair and bronze skin. Okay, so it was a photo album. How would this help anything? The next few pages showed Sam growing up. I didn't see the point of all this. Every picture was almost exactly the same. Only the background changed. In fact, two years passed before they changed. Then, Sam wasn't the only one in the pictures. At first, it was just him sitting next to a cradle. Then it was him holding a baby in his two year old lap.
Soon, the baby was a year old and had a mop of brown hair on her head. Happy brown eyes smiled into the camera. Before long, there were picture of the two of them on a swing set. Then they were playing in the waves at the beach. Chasing seagulls. Opening presents. It went on for almost the entire book. I watched a young Bella grow into a child Bella, and then a teenager Bella. I watched in fascination, seeing a glint in her eye that I had never seen before. She looked genuinely happy. Untroubled.
It got right up to where you could tell that Bella was sixteen. It showed her driving around in her giant red truck, smiling away like it was the most fun she'd ever had. It was obvious that she loved the truck, and I wondered what had happened to that. Just as I was wondering when her disappearance would come, it did.
The difference was evident and impossible to miss. Bella had been in almost every picture up to then, and now she just wasn't. The youth was completely gone from Sam's brow. He smiled into the camera, and there were times that he did look genuinely happy-mainly when he was with a girl that I didn't recognize. There were also pictures snapped of him unawares, though, and he was always scowling, staring off into the distance. Stress was visible in his every position.
And then he turned the page again, and everyone gasped. We had gotten so used to the Bella we had been looking at in the pictures, and that we had seen at school, that the shock from her reappearance, dressed in a blue shirt and fully vampire, surprised us.
But that wasn't what really hurt.
The look in her eyes was enough to cut anyone's heart. Or more, the difference. She was standing next to Sam, his arm around her waist. He was smiling again, and, while her disappearance had left an effect on him, he looked much more like the carefree person he had been before all of it. But Bella, oh Bella. She looked worse than sad, or stressed.
She looked dead.
There was hardly any emotion in her eyes. That which was there was hidden deeply, but seemed to rumble like a storm cloud just beyond the horizon. She looked dangerous, and scared, and hurt, and edgy all at once. In the first picture, Sam didn't seem to be noticing it, but by the next page, you could tell he had figured it out. Bella didn't show up in the photos as often as she had before, but whenever she did, Sam now had a slight frown on his face, looking over at her worriedly. I didn't know what all had happened to her during the missing months, but I now knew that it was more than just getting changed into a vampire. Even a change as great as that couldn't leave someone looking so haunted.
A few more months of scrapbook time passed, and Bella showed up less and less. She never once smiled, and soon she all but faded out of the book. I looked around to see the rest of my family crying, or seriously depressed in some way. Even Rosalie wasn't trying to hide it. She saw now that there was absolutely no reason to be jealous of Bella. In fact, this walk through Bella's life was making her appreciate her life just a little bit more.
For some reason, Sam kept turning the pages of the book. I wanted to call out to him to please stop. No one wanted to look on any more. It was pointless. No one wanted to see the absence of Bella on every page that screamed of depression. I had never seen a photo album tell such a story before.
And then he turned the page.
There was a full-page image blown up as large as it could go and not hang over the edges. In this page was a picture of Bella twirling around a room, holding hands with the woman from before, mouth open in laughter. Bella was turned to face the photographer at the moment, though in another she would be facing away. Her hair flew out behind her, accentuating her beauty. Her eyes were shining even more than they had when she was growing up. Happiness shone from the picture. It was clear that both girls were oblivious to the camera snapping a permanent memory of the occasion.
Sam's voice was rough when she finally spoke. "I couldn't thank the stars and every god listening enough the day she got struck by lightning. She was forced to come and stay with us for a whole week while pretending to visit a special doctor. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to shield my joy from Edward when he called me to tell me."
"What made her smile like this?" Esme whispered reverently, staring at the picture and lightly brushing the curve of Bella's cheek with the very tip of her finger, as if any loud noise or sudden movement would cause the laugh on Bella's face to dissipate.
Sam cleared his throat. "I didn't listen to the whole conversation. I just remember being shocked at the laughter and running to get the camera so I would have something to look at on the days when I though she would never smile again." He saw the disappointment on our faces, and quickly continued. "That is not to say that I don't have my theories. I may not have heard the conversation, but it wasn't an hour and a half later that she announced something to us after the boys commented on how happy she looked.
"She told us she had fallen in love. She told us that she was in love with Edward Cullen, the vampire." He let that soak in for a moment and then went on. "We were in uproar for a while. We all told her that she shouldn't be around you. That vampires were are mortal enemies and so forth. Of course, within a few minutes she showed us all just how wrong that sounded when we were standing there arguing with a vampire in my own kitchen.
"But that's not the point. The point is that you made her happy. Happy. Do you realize how big that was? The whole pack was completely baffled and thrilled at the same time. We all love Bella like a sister, and it worried us to see her so sad. And then she defended you all like I have never seen her do before. She's not one to stand up for herself. She'll drop subtle hints and let you figure out that you're wrong all by yourself. But she didn't let us say one bad word about any of you. You all changed her."
I closed my eyes, and saw that Bella was still snarling at Sam like her life depended on it, but she was crying too. She was looking at him with anger and pity and sadness all bottled up into one expression that hurt to look at. I was just glad that Jasper couldn't feel her emotions in this form. You could tell the pain she was in just by looking. If he could feel it too, it would soon be projected on to all of us. It was a selfish relief.
"Do you believe me now?" Sam asked, turning to Rose, who immediately nodded, too struck to talk.
"Okay, so now that that's cleared up, we need to go find Bella, who is not, by the way, part of the Volturi, though it was a clever lie. One that would ensure your staying here." Jacob spoke up.
So now we just needed another plan.
A/N: Okay, so here's the sad thing. I am going to be gone on a school field trip for the next week, and I will have no access to computers, so I will not be able to update. Sorry everybody, but that's just the way it works. Hope you can all handle missing me for a week ir two.
Thanks to all who read this. You guys really are the best. Please review if you feel like it. Tell me what you thought. I really kind of liked the way you got to see a little bit of what it was like for Bella, even when he wasn't there explaining it. Did you like that? Did you hate it? It doesn't matter what you think, as long as you update.
Love you guys,
~School-is-my-purgatory
