AN1: Good morning! And welcome to another glorious day on Fan Fiction (dot) Net. Time for your minimum weekly dose of KK's misfiring synapses. ;-) As always, thanks to my wonderful betas, Im2xshy and jdficwriter. Without their help and encouragement, I wouldn't be writing.
AN1.5: Ooops! I forgot this in the initial post! There's a chunk of vintage SM right in the middle of this thing. Some of Edward's internal dialog from Midnight Sun. Of course I warped it a bit. (grins) Anyway, all due credit to Miz Meyer.
Esme's POV
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. The morning after Edward saved Bella Swan's life; he had appeared for school with a look of grim finality on his face more suited to a man facing his own execution rather than a moderately dull day posing as an average American teenager. The rest of my children seemed to be in a state of watchful waiting, though even there they differed. Emmett followed Rose's lead as they obviously waited for things to go back to normal. But I got an entirely different feeling from Alice and Jasper. It was like they were waiting for something to happen. Like me, waiting for that other shoe, but unlike me, somehow unafraid of it.
I just want my children to be happy. After my Thomas had died, I thought I'd never be happy again. With my baby boy gone I had absolutely nothing left to live for, and I chose the path that inevitably, if inadvertently, had led me to Carlisle. I would never make an issue of it with my husband, but I'm sure that he knows that I still miss Tommy. If I had to give up all that I have now, for him to live again and have a future, I would do it. I don't regret my choice. I simply couldn't face a life without my baby boy in it. But if he could live again, I would surrender my current happiness for him. I would trade my life for his. It's part of a mother's love. However, that isn't the way of things, so I try to give my family everything that I would have given to him and hope that he understands.
Of all of my children, Edward has concerned me the most, in part because he was my first child of this new life, and in part because, for all his age, he still seems to be so young sometimes. He doesn't often show it now, but he has a tender heart that is easily wounded; something that his brothers and sisters forget more often than they should. It makes his gift more of a burden than it would have been for anyone else.
My son is a walking talking dichotomy. Inside he's still the sweet shy gawky boy from the turn of the last century, whom I fear was changed too young; outside he's hardened, and he's often cynical and jaded. And these last few decades, I've feared that his exterior is slowly working its way inward, towards that beautiful heart of his, where someday soon it will extinguish the soul that he doesn't believe he has, and on that day something precious will go out of our lives and the world.
He was there for me in my newborn year. He kept me from making mistakes, and offered me comfort when I failed. Most of all, he gave me focus by letting me mother him. I loved him as I would have loved my lost son, and he loved me back like his lost mother. I want what's best for him, what will make him happy, but right now I'm at a loss to say what that is. He seems both frightened and angry, and if I press him to open his heart to me he will bolt. So I suffer in silence the age-old burden of parenthood when your child is in pain. I have to wait for him to come to me.
Come to me soon, my sweet boy.
Edward's POV
High school. It was no longer the purgatory that I'd always seen it as these many decades, it was now purely hell. Torment and fire…yes, I had both.
I was doing everything correctly now. Every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed. No one could complain that I was shirking my responsibilities.
To please Esme and protect the others, I stayed in Forks. Only Alice and Jasper knew my real motivation. I returned to my old schedule. Instead of gorging myself on animal blood every other day, I now hunted no more than the rest of them. I was Carlisle Cullen's son. I would resist the call of Bella Swan's blood by my discipline alone.
Everyday, I attended high school and played human. Everyday, I listened carefully for anything new about the Cullens—there never was anything new. The girl did not speak one word of her suspicions. She just repeated the same story again and again—I'd been standing with her and then pulled her out of the way—till her eager listeners got bored and stopped looking for more details.
There was no danger. My hasty action had hurt no one.
No one but myself.
I was determined to change the future. Not the easiest task to set for oneself, but there was no other choice that I could live with.
Alice said that I would not be strong enough to stay away from the girl. I would prove her wrong.
I'd thought the first day would be the hardest. By the end of it, I'd been sure that was the case. I'd been wrong, though.
It had rankled, knowing that I would hurt the girl. I'd comforted myself with the fact that her pain would be nothing more than a pinprick—just a tiny sting of rejection— compared to mine.
Bella was human, and she knew that I was something else, something wrong, something frightening. She would probably be more relieved than wounded when I turned my face away from her and pretended that she didn't exist.
"Hello, Edward," she'd greeted me, that first day back in biology. Her voice had been pleasant, friendly, one hundred and eighty degrees from what I would have expected.
Why? What was she thinking? Had she forgotten? Decided she had imagined the whole episode? Could she possibly have forgiven me for not following through on my promise?
The questions had burned like the thirst that attacked me every time I breathed.
I wanted just one moment to look in her eyes. Just to see if I could read the answers there…
No. I could not allow myself even that. Not if I was going to change the future.
I'd moved my chin an inch in her direction without looking away from the front of the room. I'd nodded once, and then turned my face straight forward. And that's where the train started to go off the tracks.
I had steeled myself to watch through Mike Newton's eyes, knowing that they would be on Bella if she was anywhere in his line of sight, and saw, to my chagrin, that my icy rebuff seemed to have no impact at all. Bella Swan regarded my stony profile a moment longer, and then went about opening her notebook in preparation Mr. Banner's uninspiring lecture. All the while she wore a tiny self-satisfied smile that reminded me uncomfortably of the Mona Lisa. Like she knew something that I didn't. Given the fact that I was mind-blind where she was concerned, that was probably true too. I hissed under my breath in frustration. This was going to be harder than I thought.
Young master Newton didn't care for her expression either, though for different reasons than mine. He countered his own frustration with some particularly vivid mental images that made me want to backhand him – or at least break his hands, before they ever tried to find their way onto Bella's person in the manner that the worthless cretin was visualizing.
The class hour dragged by slowly. It had gone much easier once I abandoned the confines of young Mr. Newton's fantasy riddled mind in favor of less frequent peeks through the eyes of the kinder and gentler Angela Webber. It had been an act of self-preservation really. Had I been forced to endure just one more pornographic daydream involving my table-mate, I think I would have killed Mike Newton on the spot. While his desire for Bella was little different from most of the other boys in school, it truly infuriated me that he saw her in his mind as some sort of generic and completely interchangeable 'girl of the moment', a simple receptacle for his lust, instead of as the unique person that she was. If that was really how he saw women, his romantic future would be bleak to say the least. And if he continued his repulsive daydreams, I would take pleasure in making his reproductive future equally bleak.
I cut off that train of thought abruptly. Allowing the word 'romantic' appear anywhere in close proximity to Bella in my thoughts did little for my peace of mind. Add Mike Newton into the mix and I started inexplicably wanting to break things. Furniture. People. Rules.
I had already gathered my books before the bell rang, so that I could slip out the door before she could stop me. As if sensing my intent, just before the bell she said, appearing to address no one in particular, "My sister asked me to say hi." The remark was so out of left field that it froze me in my seat.
"W-what?" What was that? Had I just nearly stammered? The quaver in my voice was so fast that any ordinary human would have missed it, but I was willing to bet that Bella hadn't.
She smiled widely. "Kat said that if I saw Eddie Co…"
I raised a hand to forestall her, because I knew exactly what was about to come out of her mouth. I knew damn good and well that, wherever they were in this building, my siblings could pick out this conversation…if they were listening for it. And given recent events, what were the odds against that? I could hear Emmett drooling in anticipation of some dirt and Alice giggling at my efforts to bend the future and Bella to my will.
"I get the point." I paused. "Tell her I said hi back?"
She smirked. "I'll do that. But you know it's not going to work, right? I just thought I'd get that out there."
"What's not going to work?" I growled as the bell rang and our classmates broke for the door.
She started shoving her books and papers into her tattered back pack. She really needed a new one. "The 'I'm going to be an enormous jackass to you so you'll think I'm bad news and leave me alone' thing. If you want me to leave you alone, at least have the guts to say so to my face, instead of pretending to be something that you aren't."
"And do you know what I am?" I bit out, as I glared at her. What did she know of pretending? This was getting intolerable.
"Nope," she said brightly as she finished loading her backpack and slung it over her right shoulder, and then turned to look me directly in the eye and gift me with that enigmatic smile of hers, "but I'm working on it. I do know what you're not though, and that's the sort of jerk you've been trying to make me believe you are this morning."
"And how do you know this?" I snapped.
She turned away and started walking briskly towards the door as she tossed her answer over her shoulder.
"My little sister said so."
And then she was gone.
Intolerable I tell you! I was tempted to run after her and continue to...to…
Then my anger bled away and I found myself smiling softly in spite of my earlier petulance. Yes. It was intolerable. Then I blinked as I realized what had just happened. She'd offered me a chance to tell her to her face to leave me alone; and being the way that she is, had I asked she would have honored my request. I hadn't asked. Why hadn't I just asked? I could hear Emmett choking on his laughter clear across the building. Even Jasper couldn't restrain a chuckle at my expense, though I felt that he personally had no room to talk.
With a groan, I gathered my books and headed for Spanish. This was going to be a lot more difficult than I would have believed only yesterday.
Bella's POV
By a minor miracle, I escaped gym class with a minimum of bruising and humiliation. Coach Clapp was apparently on a sadism kick, because we played dodge ball that day, and I was pronounced fit enough to play. Okay, I agreed that I was fit enough to play. I don't like being seen as a special case when I'm really nothing special at all. I was always out on the first exchange of fire anyway, which suited me fine. Aside from that I was having a better day than yesterday or even the last several days, that's for certain.
The 'new school' depression was lifting. According to Angela Webber, who understood my aversion to the spotlight, gossip about me seemed to be dying down, or at least the nosiness was less blatant. The accident in the parking lot was still a hot topic, but my pre-Forks life wasn't fair game anymore. Lauren Mallory was no longer claiming that I was an unwed mother. (Yes, I'd heard about that.) I'd made it through the day without feeling like I was on display for everyone, at every minute. That's not to say that Mike and Eric weren't as attentive as ever, they just weren't oppressive about it today for some reason. And best of all, I'd given Edward Cullen something to think about besides his apparent need to try and scare me off.
Glancing at my watch, I saw that I was short on time. I stopped at my locker and hurriedly swapped some books in my back pack for those that I would need tonight, and walked as quickly as I dared to the parking lot, waving to the occasional familiar face as I went. Some even waved back. I was settling in…no, WE were settling in. And any lingering homesickness was submerged by a need to know what, and most importantly who Edward Cullen was. That's not to say that I planned to out him, or his family. But for my own peace of mind I had to know. Some intuition told me that it was important that I know. Some people might call that obsessive. I snorted to myself. And some people say po-tah-toe when they really mean po-tay-toe. I needed to know.
Emerging from school, into cold gray drizzle, I walked over to where my truck was parked. Thank god there was no snow or ice today. It was going to be nice to pick Kat up after school without so much baggage weighing me down. I had a goal, even if I didn't fully understand what was driving me when it came to my erstwhile savior Edward Cullen. Still, I had made a decision. For me that was always the hard part. What came afterward was just putting one foot in front of the other. I tossed my backpack into the truck and paused to see Edward emerge from the school with two of his siblings. Ah, there was some of my remaining baggage now.
He didn't even glance in my direction. None of them did. That bothered me a lot more than it should have. My eyes were stinging slightly as I pulled out of the parking lot and I told myself that I wasn't hurt, I was mad…because being hurt over some strange boy made no sense at all. Least of all one like…him.
I sighed. I never could lie well, even to myself.
I think I'm in trouble.
Edward's POV
The school day had seemed far longer than necessary, yet one thing that it certainly wasn't anymore was, boring. Outside of our one shared class, I'd kept a covert eye on the girl all day long. As I expected, despite Rosalie's snide assertions to the contrary, Bella had kept her word flawlessly. She'd repeated our agreed upon lie several times, until it took on a life of its own and spread through the faculty and student body. The downside was that Mike Newton was increasingly getting on my nerves. His fantasies were now using me as his surrogate. He spent his gym class with Bella planning a campaign whereby, if he were me, he could parlay saving Bella's life into sleeping with her by the end of the week.
It made me unreasonably angry with the boy; the unreasonable part stemming from the fact that his fantasies were nothing new. How could I be so furious at the boy simply for doing what he usually did? I told myself that it was because he was being disrespectful of young Miss Swan, albeit privately. Her father's taser was looking more inviting all the time.
On top of that, Coach Brian Clapp apparently got his teaching certificate out of a box of Cracker Jacks. What the hell was he thinking, putting Bella in a game of dodge ball this soon after the accident? I don't care if she did say that she felt well enough to play. I'm sure that Carlisle will be displeased once I tell him about it tonight. I was on pins and needles all through Spanish, having to restrain myself from leaping out of my chair every time a ball struck her. Emmett thought that I was going out of my mind. Perhaps he's right.
Prior to my arrival in parking lot at the end of the school day, I had watched through other eyes as she walked to her truck, changing viewpoints as Bella had slowly crossed the lot to her truck; all the while keeping a close eye on Alice, who was keeping a close eye on Bella's immediate future. There would be no repetitions of Tyler Crowley's stupidity, by him or anyone else.
It wasn't until she was in her truck that I allowed myself to focus on the decrepit deathtrap that she was driving. That sort of thing seemed to be emerging as Bella's usual modus operandi. To blithely step out of the frying pan and into the fire, and having no clue that she was doing so. What had Charles Swan been thinking when he bought that dinosaur? Aside from 'cheap' that is? The only thing that it had to recommend it was the fact that it was built in the days when Detroit still produced solid vehicles.
Had she been inside the truck when Crowley had hit it, she probably would have come through without a scratch, however the lack of safety features caused me concern. In a truly serious accident, their lack could get her hurt or killed. My stomach twisted at the thought. I hadn't risked exposing my family to save her life only to have her lose it to some other preventable calamity.
From their own vantage point waiting next to the Volvo, Alice and Jasper had joined me in watching her surreptitiously before Emmett, Rose, and I had even stepped out into the struggling drizzle that had been falling since before lunch. We all winced as her truck engine caught and bellowed to life. Hadn't any of the mechanics that had worked on the thing ever heard of a manifold gasket? It was really Rose's area of expertise; however most of my siblings were competent mechanics if push came to shove. It was simply that none of us had the interest that Rose did. Give me time to find the parts and an hour in our garage, and that snarling monster would be a lot quieter.
She drove out of the parking lot at the only speed her truck seemed to have, slowly, passing our car just as we reached it. Obviously in a hurry to reach the elementary school before it let out for the day. She was trying to hurry in a vehicle that was the exact opposite of hurry. I chuckled at the dichotomy between her desire, and the truck she was using to achieve it. I glanced at Alice and smirked, knowing she'd like to be there to see her young friend, but couldn't. I must have looked like I wanted to say something; either that or she 'saw' something, because she preempted me with a smile.
"Don't say it, Edward. Remember, I have dirt on you too…now. And it doesn't have to be top secret either, Mr. Colon."
I grinned and shrugged before I slid into the driver's seat as my siblings took their preferred seats, with Alice riding shotgun. Jasper suspected that there had been an exchange, and had a general idea of its nature from our emotional output. With his gift and his intimate knowledge of his wife's mind, he was better than the rest of the family at decoding mine and Alice's silent 'conversations'. Emmett on the other hand had no clue, and didn't like it. The worrisome one was Rosalie, because she wasn't curious. She was paranoid. She was suspicious of the canary feathers around Alice's mouth. Alice and I would have to have a talk about that. While I'm certain that Rose would destroy herself before she ever considered harming a child, the same wasn't true for what she might do to our little sister in retaliation for bringing said child into our lives. Rose would incinerate her closet. The grin that had never left my face widened imperceptibly. It might almost be worth it to…
"WHAT DID I SAY, EDWARD?"
I chuckled quietly as I reversed out of our parking spot and sped for home. Whatever other stresses Bella Swan was introducing into my life, she was bringing with her a bounty of one thing that had been missing for a long time. Fun.
Bella's POV
Dinner tonight is chicken and rice casserole with steamed vegetables; or it will be whenever Charlie gets home. I sighed with frustration. He was twenty minutes late. To the best of my recollection, going back to my childhood, he was almost never late, and if he was going to be held up, he called. I'd called his cell and it had gone to voicemail. It was still light out so I wasn't ready to assume the worst yet, but I was getting, to quote my mother, 'antsy'. I looked up from my homework at the kitchen table to see that Kat, her own schoolwork finished, was still quietly watching TV. I'd plowed through my reading for government and bio, conjugated half a dozen 'shoe' verbs in Spanish, corrected the grammar in a sample paragraph for English, and now I was grinding my way through trig. It was slow going now that I was past where I'd been in Phoenix. Mr. Varner truly was an awful teacher. A nice guy, but a lousy teacher.
I heard a car outside in the driveway, and glanced out the window to see Charlie's cruiser roll to a stop. I sighed with relief as the tension that I hadn't imagined myself feeling left me. He was home, safe. I hastily cleared my work off the table and was starting to set out the plates and silverware when the front door opened. Half a heart-beat later I heard a rising squeal of pure joy that ended in "PUPPY!"
I dropped the plate in my hand and spun around awkwardly to see a black blur fly into the kitchen followed by a larger blur that had to be my sister…if the laughter was anything to go by.
Dinner was going to be even later than I could have imagined late tonight.
I looked up to see Charlie standing in the doorway with a look on his face that seemed oscillating between smug and adoring as he watched Kat roll around on the kitchen floor giggling madly. The pudgy black bundle of fur seemed hell-bent on tongue washing every bit of Kat that he or she could reach. Okay, I have to admit, it's a cute puppy. Sue me. I smiled myself and looked back up to see Charlie grinning at me. He lifted and eyebrow as if to say 'Gotcha!', and I simply shrugged back. He and the puppy had won that one.
"Where did he come from?" I asked.
"The wife of one of my cops," he replied. "Her folks got them a purebred female Bernese Mountain dog puppy for their anniversary three years ago, and they had her bred awhile back. They kept one puppy for themselves and sold the rest…and then there was this one. His markings are atypical for a Berner, so they can't sell him as one."
"Atypical?" I looked at the puppy trying to see what could be wrong.
"They're supposed to have a broad white stripe on the muzzle and forehead. His is just barely there. That puts him out of the running as a marketable purebred. So, Mark Callahan and his wife were looking for a good home for him."
The puppy gamboled over to me and started sniffing my shoes, so I bent down and picked him up, only to end up with a thorough tongue bath for my trouble. His nearly solid black head and muzzle looked fine to me. He was warm, soft, and sweet-smelling – all cuddly and perfect for my sister.
"He's ten weeks old right now, but he'll grow. According to Mark, Berners are big dogs when they're full grown. His female certainly is. He'll top out around 100 pounds or maybe a bit more. They're excellent family dogs and they stay pretty playful even when they're grown, but by the same token he'll be big enough to give any wild animal around these parts second thoughts."
I shuddered at the thought of what sort of animal would require a 100 pound dog to run it off and resolved, dog or no dog, to keep a closer eye on Kat in the future.
"What's his name?"
"Larry!" Kat piped up.
But Charlie shook his head. "No, Sweetie, Mark and his wife already gave him a name that he answers to. His name is Emmett."
I gave him a final cuddle and put him down to play with Kat.
"Hi Emmett!" she giggled, as he planted his front paws on her chest in a vain effort to reach her face.
Alice's POV
Silent giggles bubbled up in my throat, where I stood on the edge of the Swan property. Jasper was having hysterics up on his perch in a spruce tree. There would be no visiting for me for a while, until I could get Em…Emm…the puppy used to me. I fell backward against a tree trunk and slid down it, giggling helplessly.
Jasper half fell and half jumped out of his spruce tree to land next to me, still laughing.
"Ali? When the family finds out, I call dibs on telling Emmett."
TBC
AN2: As always, the feedback button feeds the muse.