Chapter 14 – The Attic
Edward was tucked into the far corner, the sloping walls of the attic brushing his left arm. He was as motionless as a statue, and the circles under his eyes were a deep purpley-black – but he was still the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I took a step towards him, and his eyelids fluttered open, revealing pitch black irises. He looked right at me, and every muscle in his body seemed to relax.
"Finally," he sighed. His voice was at once more musical than that of my hallucinations and hazy memories, and rougher than I had ever heard it, as though he hadn't spoken in a very long time. "I was wondering when I would see you again," he continued.
My chest swelled and the hole beat out a frantic rhythm, but there was no pain. "Edward," I whispered, taking another step. After all this time, he was finally right in front of me, his voice ringing in my ears and his scent filling my lungs. Just a few more steps and I could—
The forgotten headset, still wedged snuggly in my ear, crackled to life. "Do you have him?" Jasper's voice asked, intent and business like. I snatched the offending piece of plastic out of my ear and jammed it into my pocket. Jasper would just have to wait.
Edward was still staring up at me. "Bella?" he asked, his voice soft and uncertain.
I didn't have the words to answer him, but I crossed the small space in a few quick steps, sinking to my knees within arm's reach.
He continued to watch me, his dark eyes unblinking. "Are you really here?" he asked after a moment. His breath was sweet on my tongue, and for the space of a heartbeat I forgot where we were or why I was here.
"Yes, I'm here," I finally managed.
He nodded and looked away. "Then it's as I feared," he sighed sadly, and the hole in my chest spasmed at the sound.
Before I could reply, he was on his feet, pacing towards the window and looking out across the city. I stood and followed him slowly, trying to piece together the meaning behind his words, even as my wound ached at the sight of him walking away. Blinking at his back, I tried desperately to cling to the present, but it was like sand running through my fingers. I was falling backwards, the walls of my mind closing in around me.
Somehow despite all the months that had passed, despite my transformation from human into vampire and no small helping of mental instability, I could still remember the feeling of his cold lips on my forehead as he said goodbye, that terrible day in the forest.
"Take care of yourself," he breathed, cool against my skin…
"You'll forgive me for the delay, I hope," he said, his soft voice wrenching me out of my memories. "I had to be sure." He turned to face me again, backlit by the city, his dark eyes impossibly large.
"Well I'm here now…" I said into the silence that followed, feeling like I ought to say something.
He smiled tremulously, and his eyes seemed to echo the pain in my chest. "Yes, you are here now," he whispered, then crossed the room slowly to stand in front of me, close but not quite touching. I had to tip my chin up to meet his eyes, swallowing and shaking slightly at his sudden proximity.
"Will you stay with me?" he asked, gazing down at me.
I stared up at him, and knew there had only ever been one answer to that question. "Of course," I whispered on the last of my air, my chest too tight to draw breath, even as the pain stuttered to a halt.
He smiled a bit more genuinely, then sank gracefully to the floor. I felt rather than saw his hand ghost over the back of mine, and realized a moment too late that he had started to reach for me before changing his mind. I sat quickly beside him, struggling again to keep up with his sudden shifts.
Edward was watching me with his large, dark eyes, his expression indecipherable. "It seems strange to say now, but I've missed you," he whispered into the silence of night-time noises.
The weight of the last six months came crashing in on me at his words, but I shoved it behind the wall of white noise and focused on the present, on the fact that Edward had missed me, even a little. I managed a small smile and a breath. "I missed you too," I replied softly, though the word was so insufficient it was nearly a lie.
He leaned towards me, but again stopped short of touching me, his head inclined towards my shoulder, but hovering just above. I relaxed by inches, leaning towards him as well, and for the first time in six months, drew a deep breath without the stabbing pressure of the wound his absence had left behind. His smell filled my lungs, filled my head and made me dizzy, the honey-lilac-sunshine sweet on my tongue, full of the comfort of home and the promise of hope.
"Will you stay?" Edward asked again a moment later, his voice so vulnerable and child-like that the breath caught in my throat.
"I'm not going anywhere," I assured him quietly, resisting the impulse to take his hand. There would be time enough for that, once he was ready.
He sighed, and his breath felt warm against my skin; my mind understood the change, but my heart still flinched at the absence of the chill that had once defined his presence. "Thank you, Bella," he whispered, and his head finally touched my shoulder.
We sat in silence for a full minute, his head resting on my shoulder. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, as I simply enjoyed the feeling of being near him again. After everything I had been through, after all the months of heartache and my implacable fears the last twenty-four hours, he was finally really here, right beside me, safe and real. I hadn't allowed myself to dream of best-case scenarios for our reunion, so I had nothing to compare this to. He wasn't offering explanations or apologies, but at least he wasn't running away or asking me to leave. I rested my head on top of his, content for this moment to leave everything unsaid.
Time slipped past us unnoticed as we sat, curled into one another. I tried not to think about the confrontations still ahead of us or of the questions still unanswered. Instead I concentrated on his smell, on the feel of his hair against my cheek, my chest thrumming painlessly.
But as the minutes continued to tick by and Edward continued to sit, silent and unmoving, I felt the smile slide from my face. When he had said stay, he couldn't have meant here, could he? I would stay with him as long as he wanted me, no matter where in the world he went, but staying here in this attic was a far different thing.
But why not? part of my mind retorted. He was here, and we were together, finally. If we left here, how long would it be before we found this delicate balance again? If I rushed him out of this attic, back into the real world of his hurt family and his boredom with me, of It will be as though I never existed, how long would it take him to remember all the reasons he left to begin with? How long until I would have to give up the place I had established with the Cullens?
So why not stay here? As long as his head rested against my shoulder, I would never want to move. No one would find us in this forgotten attic. The city could fall around us, and we wouldn't notice. I could call Jasper and tell them not to bother, to go back without us, that we would be staying here, together.
It would be so easy to stay, and just the thought of it held such comfort. To never again be parted from him, to never move from this spot. Eternity stretched out in front of me, but as long as we were together, the years were meaningless. I could spend forever curled up here with him, all I had to do was stay…
"There's going to be a moment when you'll want to stay there with him, stay in that attic and never leave," Alice's voice rang clearly in my perfect memory, her sad, worried face swimming in front of my eyes. "But please, don't. I can't stand the thought of losing you both. Come back to me, and bring my brother with you." I closed my eyes against the familiar burn of absent tears. I couldn't do this to Alice, or to Esme, or Jasper, or any of them. No matter how much I wanted to stay here and never move again, I couldn't put them through that.
"Edward," I said softly, my mind made up. "It's time to go."
He sighed and turned his head to look up at me, but didn't lean away. "We could just stay…" he said in a small voice.
I shook my head, resolutely holding to my decision, and not meeting his eyes for fear my resolve would crumble if I did. "You need to—" my throat constricted around the words come back with me, "—go back to Forks."
He was silent for a beat, and I felt his eyelashes brush my shoulder as he let his eyes drift closed. "Why would I go back to Forks?" he asked, his voice morose and puzzled.
The pain in my chest surged back to life in a single drawn-out spike, as the realization hit me that maybe I had read too much into his desire to stay. Maybe he didn't want me after all. I could feel my shield shutting down, protecting my mind from the pain, and I pushed back against it. He didn't want me, but that didn't change anything. "To be with your family," I whispered, once I had control over my lungs again.
He leaned away, and though I could feel his gaze on me, I didn't look up. "And what about you?" he asked softly.
The hole fluttered, but I resisted the hope his words offered. "I'll be there too, if you want me to be," I replied, still looking away.
He was silent for a long moment, and I finally looked up at him. Edward was staring at me with his inkwell eyes, and as I watched he reached a hand out tentatively towards me. He paused a quarter of an inch short of my cheekbone, his eyes flickering across my face. I stopped breathing, wondering if he had only just realized that I wasn't human anymore.
"You aren't her, are you?" he whispered into the sudden silence.
I blinked up at him, horror making my chest heavy and numb even as the hole throbbed. Of course I wasn't her – I was the vampire who had taken up residence in her dead body. "Of course I am," I said, my mouth forming the words silently.
"You aren't," he said, shaking his head, a note of hysteria growing in his voice. "You aren't her. You look like her, but not, not quite, and of course you don't smell right, I can't believe I didn't notice—"
I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing all my strength on controlling my body, on holding my shield open. "Please, Edward, please, it's me," I insisted, the tears I could never shed surfacing in my voice. "You need to go home to Forks."
"What trickery, what madness is this?" he asked himself as though he hadn't heard me, the edge in his voice growing.
"It's me, Edward, it's Bella!" I said over his words, desperate now. "Please, trust me! Just go back to Forks, and you'll see that everything is all right."
Sudden understanding seemed to dawn on his face, and I recoiled from the hatred in his black eyes. "That's exactly what you want, isn't it?" he asked, his voice low and menacing. "You want me to go back to Forks?"
My eyes were burning with absent tears and my chest was threatening to collapse inward, but somehow I managed to swallow past the pain and answer him. "Yes," I rasped out, holding his gaze.
But he shook his head. "I was wrong— I didn't see—" he said to himself, the hysteria creeping back in.
"Edward, please," I dry-sobbed, reaching towards him.
"Demon!" he hissed, cringing away from me. "Go back to Hell! You will not lure me with your false promises! You will not trick me into ruining her life!" He stood in one swift motion, towering over me. "How dare you take her form? How dare you use her against me, Hell-spawn?"
He lunged towards me, his hands outstretched, and what happened next was a combination of instinct and my perfect memory of Emmett's grappling lessons. I leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding his long fingers as they curled into claws – fingers that I had seen play the piano with such beauty so many times, hands that had touched me in gentleness and love, now reaching out to do me harm. I pushed the thought from my head as I tucked into a fast summersault, landing behind him.
I stood quickly just as he spun to face me, his gaze murderous. I side-stepped his lunge and jumped onto his back, grabbing his right arm and twisting it behind him, in a move Emmett had made me practice again and again. Edward cried out in pain, and the wound in my chest screamed out an answer to him, but I refused to give in to the agony. I leapt back, still holding tightly to his arm, landing light on my feet and hauling Edward several paces backwards, and while he was still off balance drove my shoulder hard into the middle of his back, knocking him to the ground. I landed my weight on top of him, pinning him with my knees against his shoulders, his right arm still twisted at an unnatural angle.
My breath was escaping me in ragged sobs, and the absence of my heart hammering against my ribs was disconcerting and strange against the uninterrupted wail of pain from the center of my chest. I leaned forward, trapping the man I loved, the man who had once been a god in my eyes, easily with my monstrous new strength. He whimpered at the further twisting of his shoulder joint, and I saw his jaw clench, muscles rippling beneath his stone skin.
"Please," I whispered close to his ear, the sobs making my voice hiccup and tremble. "Please, Edward, just come with me. Please, for me, please."
"You cannot have me, devil!" he spat, twisting his neck at what had to be a painful angle to look up at me, his black eyes filled with hate.
I leaned back, unsure of what to do, my shoulders shaking uncontrollably. And at that moment the cell phone in my pocket buzzed.
Keeping Edward's arm pinned tightly against his back, I dug in my pocket with my other hand, pulling out the little headset Jasper had given me and jamming it into my ear before pushing the small button that would answer the call.
"I have him," I gasped out between sobs.
"Are you hurt?" Jasper's voice came across the line, distorted by the subtle interference. Even through the digital buzzing, I could tell that he was angry.
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see it. "No. He tried, but… No." Not hurt in any physically discernable way, at least.
"We're on our way to you now. Can you hold him another few moments?" came Jasper's quick reply.
"Yes," I hiccupped.
"We're almost there, just hold on."
"We're in a fourth story attic," I told him then, fighting the urge to wipe my dry nose on my sleeve, as though I actually had tears to make my nose run. "I don't know how…"
"Is there a window?" Jasper asked, and outside I could hear the squeal of tires on the dew-dampened streets, still a few blocks away. "Something with a clear shot to the ground?"
I flashed back to the image of the side of the building, stored perfectly in my ridiculous brain. The balcony had been to the left of the window, the fire escape to the right. It was a straight drop down to the street. "Yes," I answered.
"If you can get him out the window, Emmett will catch you. Otherwise we'll come to you."
I nodded into the blackness of the attic, then pried the headset from my ear, keeping Jasper on the line this time. Leaning down again, I let my cheek just barely graze the skin behind Edward's ear, hoping that maybe some sort of physical contact, beyond the pain I was inflicting on his arm, would snap him out of whatever madness had seized him.
"Please, Edward," I whispered. "It's Bella." I took a deep breath and clenched my eyes shut, steeling myself for this one last, most painful attempt. "I love you. Please come home with me."
"Lies!" he snarled in response, thrashing against my hold.
Outside, the van screeched to a halt below the window, its engine growling in the pre-dawn air. I held the headset up, not bothering to put it in my ear. "We're coming down," I said simply, then pressed the button to end the call.
I stood, hauling Edward to his feet, the inches and pounds he had on me making little difference to my newborn strength. He attempted to spin out of my grasp as he stood, and while his movements were almost certainly too fast for any human to process, he seemed to me to be moving in slow motion. I grabbed his other arm easily, twisting it behind his back as well and eliciting another cry of pain from him. A ragged sob escaped me in response, my own pain far beyond words.
Still holding his arms tightly, I trudged towards the window, pushing Edward along in front of me. I turned us around when we reached it, standing between Edward and the open window. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Emmett waiting directly below, looking up at me, his arms outstretched.
"Ready when you are," he said quietly, his voice easily carrying to my ears.
Edward thrashed in my grasp, his shoulder joints grinding sickeningly. "No matter what you do to me, demon, I will never go with you!"
I closed my eyes, the pain shooting like an electric shock outward from my chest, down to my fingers and toes. "Not even for Bella?" I asked softly, referring to myself in the third person in hopes it would somehow break the spell.
"Especially not for Bella!" he growled in response.
I sighed, my chest crumbling inward, and then looked over my shoulder again, down at Emmett. At his nod, I clutched Edward to me, pinning his arms between us even as he continued to struggle, holding him in something strangely reminiscent of a hug. Pulling Edward with me, I leaned backwards out of the window and let myself fall, my feet scraping against the edge of the windowsill as we tumbled past. The empty air rushed up to meet us.