Chapter 21 – Anywhere But Here
Silence can be a fickle thing. In the aftermath of lovemaking, the silence that descends upon a room, tangy with the smell of passion, can bring about a sense of comfort and satisfaction. This silence is welcomed, luring the entwined lovers to a sleep infused with drowsy warmth and happy dreams. In a meeting of awkward proportions between two exes who have not crossed paths for many years after a painful separation, silence can be an awkward entity, drowning both parties into a vacuum of discomfort and self-consciousness. Silence can speak louder than words or actions ever could. When a partner accuses their lover of infidelity and the latter fails to retaliate verbally, the silence that hangs between them takes on the characteristics of a specter; it cannot be seen but the temperature in the room plummets and its presence can be felt through the gale of emotions running rampant. Silence is also a tool, wielded like a double-edged blade, harnessed for intimidation or taken as a vow of consent. Yes, silence, just like the ever-changing weather, can be fickle.
The silence that sat between Alice and Bella, however, was a different kind of animal, born from the womb of a dizzying combination of guilt, regret, pain and suffering. Dominating every nuance and corner of the shadow painted room, the silence that pervaded this intimate space created from four walls was undeniable.
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Bella slumped against the sturdy structure of the doorframe, her entire weight leaning against it with such physical heavy dependence that the girl was half-terrified that it may crack under the pressure of it. She could feel her world crashing down on her, splintering into a million pieces of which there was no chance of resurrection. She would know; she was the one who had brought the hammer down, slamming its blunt weight onto the fragile sphere she had barely begun to build and watched it shatter to smithereens.
"How…" Bella allowed the question to trail off, the first word barely reaching maturity through the open seam between her lips as her mind screamed out the answer. Another voice vied for dominance, shrieking at the stupidity of that question, for Bella knew full well just how Alice knew of a decision she had barely come to discover. But there was another reason for the voicing of that question: Bella had very few tools in her arsenal left and the silence that encompassed the room was too terrible to bear. She needed a word, a ragged whisper of breath, even the thud of her own body dropping to the ground, to pierce through the armor of silence that bore down upon her like a deadly plague.
"I had a vision." Alice answered the question anyway, her voice flat and emotionless though her face had smoothen out into a mask of passivity that was almost eerily serene. It was as though she had been privy to this information long before Bella herself had come to be aware of its presence. Bella pounced on this knowledge like a savage beast long starved of a meal; she would have clung onto any lifeline, any last tattered ragged thread of communication so long as it kept this stilted conversation going. Anything to keep the jaws of silence from swallowing them whole.
"When did you know?" The question was pained, loaded with unequaled guilt and Bella felt her throat scraped raw from such naked emotion that channeled its way through her vocal cords and up the walls of her throat.
"The day you woke from your coma."
Bella felt each word like a physical blow, so much so, that she staggered where she stood. She felt the beginnings of tears; they prickled at the edges of her eyes, stinging droplets of impatient liquid wanting to fall but forced to wait until the emotional floodgates opened. She forced herself to look up, to seek out the elfin vampire's gaze…and flinched when their eyes met; Alice's face may have been the epitome of resigned serenity but her eyes bespoke of a different tale. Eyes of crushed liquid gold held more sorrow and anguish than Bella ever thought was possible for any individual, vampire or human to feel. It was so intense, so present that Bella felt its pull, as if Alice's eyes were twin whirlpools, sucking Bella under its umbrella of pain. Unable to confront such blatant emotion, the brunette looked away, her own eyes of bitter dark chocolate, patterned with silver-blue, flickering a path to the floor where looming shadows stretched and yawned, lapping up to Bella and retreating with every overlap of cloud across the moonlight that shown in through the window.
"All this time, all these weeks…you knew." A pregnant pause as Bella scrambled to articulate her sentences. "How can you stand it?" Her eyes wavered back to Alice, unable to resist drowning those golden depths despite the swirls of terrible emotion wracking havoc within them.
"I love you."
Not "I loved you". Not the past tense. The simplicity of Alice's answer threw Bella off-balance, hitting her blindside with such force that she was left discombobulated and bewildered by those three words. "What?" The girl regretted the question for confirmation the minute it came out of her mouth; she did not want Alice to repeat those three words.
But repeat Alice did. "I love you." Three simple words, bound in such complex devotion and yet hindered by the vampire's obvious pain by the current state of affairs, picked a tangent, melancholy tune on Bella's heartstrings. The three words could be substituted for three chords on a guitar, each one ringing out plaintively a melody enriched with sincerity but peppered with an underlining of grief. Had it been a song, it would have no doubt rendered the listener to an aching heart and the onset of tears.
Bella's mind raced in response to those uttered words. Closing the door behind her, her legs moved on autopilot, walking a determined path to where Alice sat, perched still as a statue on the edge of the bed. "I love you." Bella had never heard those words uttered to her before. Never thought she would live long enough to hear them directed at her with such brutal honesty and truth. The way Alice phrased it; it was hard for Bella to explain. She had heard these three words strung together before in movies, read them endlessly in books but the way Alice spoke them to her made Bella feel as though they were spoken for the first time in history. Created, molded and spoken for her and her alone. And it hurt.
Bella reached Alice and knelt down in front of her, hands reaching out to cradle Alice's in her palms. "Take it back." The girl's voice was harsh with pain. She squeezed Alice's hands as she repeated her request, the guilt riddling her voice so evident and loud.
Alice smiled down Bella, a small smile that told Bella that, no; she was not going to take it back. Because it was the truth. "There are a lot of things I've regretted in my life, Bella." Alice's mask of passivity wrinkled away to one of contemplation as her mind pulled out the drawer of memories that no doubt contained Alice's regrets. "But," The vampire paused, less for dramatic effect but still had the same outcome as she gathered her thoughts. "Loving you is not one of them."
The kiss was unexpected. It was at once, loving and needy, gentle yet rough, communicating such a poignant note of desperation that it took Alice's non-existent breath away. She allowed Bella to press her against the bedpost, allowed her to cup both hands on either side of her cold cheeks as her lips assaulted her own. Alice responded in turn, sinking both hands into Bella's hair and carding fingers through the silky texture even as she cradled the back of Bella's head, forcing their already fused mouths closer together. Lips tripped over each other in a feverish pace, tugging and sucking. Mouths open to allow a tongue to chase the other into a warm, wet cavern where the muscles would writhe and dance to a rhythm neither had trouble recognizing. One set of teeth gnashed at a full bottom lip, hard enough to leave neat lines of indentations on the surface but not hard enough to draw blood. Another lower lip was suckled on furiously, drawing out the sweetness and uniqueness that was the owner's scent and taste. In a maddening clash of lips, teeth and tongue, the kiss between Bella and Alice was primordial as they both used the action to communicate their unspoken needs, to wipe away stains of guilt, to voice out a desire long denied.
Bella was the first to pull away, her need for oxygen making her already clouded head dizzy from the lack of air intake. She rested her forehead against Alice's, breathing ragged and her heart pounding so loudly that it was rattling the rack of ribs encasing the thumping organ.
Alice ran a soothing hand down Bella's back, drawing light circles with her fingers as she waited for the girl to get her pulse and breathing back under control. She marveled at the way Bella's back muscles quivered and jumped at her touch, the tiny tremors that would quake through her body as Alice's fingers traced the bumps of her spine. She resisted the urge to track her fingers under the material of Bella's shirt, to feel warm skin against her cold one, to soak in the warmth of a human body that was denied to vampires.
Bella pressed a small kiss to the tip of Alice's nose. "I love you too," she finally admitted though the way she said it made it sound as if she were announcing her own death sentence. Voice low with the guilty thrill of finally saying those words back, to acknowledge that that kind of bond existed between them, brought the velvet feel of elation and the violent reality of the situation raining down upon Bella like a hailstorm of boulders.
Alice's eyes fluttered close at the intimate contact and those three words. Never had she heard those words spoken with equal parts devotion and pain. Forcing her eyes back open, she looked straight at Bella. "Where will you go?"
Bella flinched and expanded the distance between them until Alice caught hold of her hand, securing her in place. The look in the vampire's eyes were steadying, anchoring Bella to the ground, to the bed, to Alice. The understanding, so unconcealed and open on Alice's face forced Bella to realize that the vampire deserved nothing but the truth. She was beginning to realize just how painful a lesson this was; to learn that the truth really did hurt. It hurt not only her but also all those who were connected to her; the pain streamlining down the ties that bound her and Alice together.
"Anywhere but here," was the whispered answer. Bella's tone was reeking of shame and that well-preserved guilt again reared its ugly head.
Alice tried hard not to let the words sting but it was a futile gesture. "Away from me," she corrected flatly.
The biting tears piling up at the corners of her eyes came back with a vengeance and Bella felt that last tendril of resistance slip unrestrained through her fingers like sand through a sieve as the tears fell unbidden. She felt them slide down gaunt cheeks, trailing a hot path from her eyes to the tips of her chin before they splashed harmlessly onto the bedspread, creating little circular wet translucent stains. "Away from all this!" A grand sweep of her hand as Bella tried to get her point across. "Away from the knowledge that vampires exist, away from the fact that this is where I was abducted and tortured, away from what I am." A harsh drawing in of breath cut off Bella's sudden passionate rant. When she regained her steam, the look of dogged resignation residing in her eyes had Alice forcibly stamping down the urge to run or cover her ears. "And yes." Bella's eyes resolutely refused to let go of Alice's gaze. "Yes. Away from you."
And there it was. The final blow. The last pounding of that metaphorical hammer straight through the core of Bella's world, sniffing out the last vestige of light, of hope, of life. Bella could almost see it flicker, attempting to relight but unable to find the source of energy it used to sustain itself. Like a damaged light bulb, it gave one last feeble spurt of light before dimming into darkness, forever unusable, broken.
Alice slid off the bed and walked to the window. Moonlight engulfed her petite frame, washing her in silvery-white light and making her skin almost translucent. This time the silence that crept back in was invited with open arms, a willing and welcome spectator to what was transpiring in the room. "Where will you go?" Alice repeated the question, her voice soft, ethereal almost. She turned molten gold eyes onto Bella, the piercing look combined with the backdrop of moonlight almost making her eyes glow.
Bella looked back at Alice through a blurry curtain of tears. Her face was pinched, a gauntlet of emotions stampeding across her face in rapid succession, each vying for dominance and attention. Bella had come this far. She had driven the nails in her coffin, made her bed. Now all she could do was lie in it. "Anywhere but here," she said again, voice hoarse with sorrow and regret. She held out a hand, and waited until Alice came back to her, came to take the proffered hand, framing it with her own with such careful tenderness that it broke Bella's already broken heart. This time when her eyes sought out Alice's, the inevitable and palpable sadness gleaming from the vampire's face no doubt was facing its twin on Bella's own face. The brunette looked at their entwined hands, really looked, for she wanted to commit the image to memory. Finally, she brought them up to her lips and placed one irrevocable kiss on Alice's knuckles, her hot tears anointing Alice's cold skin.
"Anywhere but here."
THE END
A/N – No, I'm really not kidding. This is the end. Obviously, it's not the happy ending people were gunning for but when I started this story, this was the ending I had in mind. Now before anybody starts throwing virtual rocks and stones at me, I might be inclined to do a sequel. BUT, only if there's interest. Cheers and thanks to everybody who has kept up with the story and left reviews.