EdwardPOV:
The bell rang at last, and I sprinted for the parking lot with Alice and Bella on my heels. Silently and unnoticed, we darted into the forest.
"You didn't see this coming?" I asked Alice as we ran, following Liz's scent.
"See what coming? His poem? He kept changing his mind about that…" she replied, unaware of what was really going on.
"He knows…"
"About what she is? Or what we all are?" Bella asked, worry touching her beautiful face.
"Her for certain… but he wasn't thinking about the rest of us, so I'm not sure," I replied.
"We're leaving then?" Alice asked. "I was really liking it here. Their fashions program is fun and Jasper and I really like ice skating…"
"I don't know! Alice can you see us leaving?" I snapped slightly. I was tense knowing that this all rested on Liz's decision as to whether or not she wanted to stay.
Alice stopped and her eyes glazed over. I stopped to wait for her, using this time to compose myself. The vision flickered between moving and leaving Liz behind, to do God-only-knows what and all of us staying. Nothing held.
"I can't tell! There's a big fork in the vision," she whined as we began to run again.
"It's Liz's decision," I stated, as we closed in on her location.
She emerged from behind a large spruce, and walked slowly towards us.
"That would be helpful, if I knew what to choose… there are too many possibilities, too many variables," she said. Her mind was unguarded and the thoughts overlapped so quickly that I couldn't make sense of any of them.
Bella ran to her side and pulled her close. It was almost eerie seeing them intertwined like that, like they ceased being separate entities and became one. Of course, Elizabeth was taller, thinner, and her hair darker, but I could comprehend how humans could see them as twins. There was something unspoken, almost fated and innate about their bond with one another.
"It helps if you calm down before you try to make big decisions… I can't remember how many times Edward told me not to make a certain tough choice while the sword was hanging over my head," Bella whispered, stroking Liz's hair.
"That's true…" she sighed and wrapped her arms around Bella.
"Liz, did you tell him?" I asked.
"No… It's odd. I was just listening to the poem and things started clicking… in a very dangerous way," she said, looking at me over Bella's shoulder and partially through Bella's hair. "Did you happen to hear his thoughts? He does know right? I'm not just overreacting, am I?"
"Oh, he knows you're a vampire alright," I replied without humour.
She cursed steadily for almost a minute.
"And? What does he think? Is he going to tell everyone and get us chased out, or himself put in a nut house?" she asked.
"It appears that the ball is fully in your court on that one," Alice replied.
"But… is he disgusted?" she said quietly.
"Not that I could tell. He's only recently found out as far as I could ascertain… his mind is still trying to process it," I replied. "Perhaps you ought to just…"
"I can't leave, Edward!" she cried in frustration, reading my thoughts. "Love… Edward, it's love. I couldn't leave if I wanted…"
"Then you'll have to talk to him," I said, thinking my disproval rather than saying it.
"I suppose I do," she said, as her eyes unfocused and she slipped into a vision.
"Well, then, I suppose it's settled," I replied when her eyes refocused.
"He's waiting," she said simply, giving Bella one last squeeze about the shoulders.
Bella pulled her back and planted a kiss in her hair.
"Good luck," Bella wished, letting her go.
"If only luck would help…" and with that she ran away from us.
"What do we do now?" Bella asked, looking sad.
"He won't tell…It seems humans these days are far too trusting for their own good…" I muttered.
"But what do we do?" my love asked, taking my shoulders between her hands and looking me in the eyes.
"We could go back to school… he's waiting for her in his car in the parking lot and she's going to go for a drive with him. Or we could go home."
"Home," she said with a nod.
ElizabethPOV:
He was waiting in the car, true to the vision. He looked upset; not angry or afraid, but sad. His fingers drummer distractedly on the dashboard and I approached so slowly that I was barely moving. His eyes watched my approach in the rear-view mirror with piercing blue clarity. Those eyes, which remained blue in all the visions, those baffling, deep, fathomless eyes. Finally, I opened the passenger door and got in.
"Sorry I ran out like that," I said.
"You don't have to act in front of me anymore," he replied, looking as if he might cry.
"Why don't we drive and talk?" I suggested.
He swallowed loudly and started the engine without saying a word. His hands shook slightly, but he was keeping his thoughts on the road. That was probably safest.
"You know you don't have to be afraid of me. I wouldn't dream of hurting you…"
"I know…" he whispered. "Man, if I'd have known how true the food metaphor had been at the time… vampire! Who would have thought? I mean a fiction write couldn't have crafted it all any better..."
"I… I don't drink human blood. Just animals… well and coffee that one time with you," I joked slightly, remembering how simple things had been not all that long ago.
"Oh, that's right… so human beverages don't kill you?" he said with a slight smile. His memories flashed to that day and had a happy air about them.
"You don't want to kill me do you? Now that you know I'm well…a…"
"A vampire?"
"Yeah. God, I haven't really hated that word until now…"
"I don't want to kill you…" "Why would she think that?"
"But you hate me…? You never want to see me again do you?" I said, my voice cracking, as he pulled over to the side of the road near an abandoned campground.
"No! Never. I love you," he said, taking my one hand, that had been hanging limply on my lap, in both his hands.
"Mors certa. How can you love what would ultimately be your death?" I said sadly, not able to look into his eyes.
"You said yourself, you won't hurt me."
"I may not kill you myself but there are dangers associated with me and my life. For one, you could be killed for knowing what I am… they'd probably try to kill me as well for allowing you to know. And one day you will die… you are human…"
"Fair enough. Forewarned, forearmed." "Love is the one thing that makes fate acceptable…"
"I don't understand," I said, at last looking into those eyes which undid me so. "How can you deal with this? I'm exactly what you should fear… I'm not what I seem. Everything about me should send chills down your spine and send you running in the opposite direction! My skin… the cold, it never did bother you…" I said, placing my hands on his wrists. "Don't you feel how cold my hands are?"
"I do," he was simply, not moving.
"But that's not normal… that should tell you there's something wrong with me."
"It doesn't say anything, because I know what's in your heart and as long as you love me, I don't care," he replied, placing his palms to my cheeks. "God, how I love her… and it's love too not just some infatuation. There's intensity here… the kind of stuff they write about."
"My heart!? A heart that hasn't beat in over two hundred years!" I exclaimed in barely above a whisper.
"That long?" he asked with only mild curiosity. "Wow, so all those stories about immortality were true…"
"Yeah. I'm older than I told you, too. I'm not sixteen… I'm seventeen; forever."
"I always did like older women," he said, with a grin. "Two hundred years older though.. Oh man, if this wasn't so amusing, it would be weird."
Then, he leaned in and kissed me impulsively on the nose. I looked into his eyes; beautiful, accepting, familiar eyes… very familiar. Suddenly, my mind flickered farther back. Could they be so similar by coincidence? No, that was impossible… but too familiar too let it pass.
"Wait… How did you find out?" I asked, pulling back slightly to examine his face more closely.
"My grandma asked me to clean out the attic and I was going through these old boxes of stuff, way at the back… There was this old book of poems and I thought I'd find a really sweet one to read to you…" "Because I thought Cummings might be a bit too bawdy to read in class…"
"A book of poems?" I asked, confused.
"Yeah, and so I was going though it and out of one the pages tumbled this very old photo. And I looked at it and at first I thought I was going crazy… because I could have sworn it looked like you next to some guy. So I thought I was getting crazy, because I was crazy enough about you to think any woman who looked like you was you. "
In his thoughts I saw the photograph, it was greatly aged but preserved for the most part. I recognized it instantly, but how it had turned up in his attic I had no idea.
"So, when grandma came home that night I asked her about who was in the photo. She told me that it was a photograph of her dead uncle, George, who had been her mother's only sibling. I asked about the woman… and she rifled through the poetry book and found the dedication in the front…" he said.
"To my fiancé, George: To keep me on your mind whenever we must part. Liz. March 14th, 1914," I completed, at last putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
"Yes! And then, I guess I realised that the woman in the photo didn't look like you… she was you. I asked her what happened to George and she told me how he died in the war… only three months after the dated dedication in the book. Died in the first month of the war… And no one knew what happened to his fiancé; she disapeared..."
"Yes... I know where I recognize your eyes from now. George was a long time ago, and it broke my heart to pieces… I didn't think I'd ever feel again, until you. What I feel for you… it's stronger than words could ever describe," I said, slowly.
"And I went and looked up stuff on the internet… immortality, beauty, cold…"
"And you found out?"
"Yeah."
"And you still love me?"
"Love conquers all. I told you that, the first night we kissed…"
"Love cannot conquer death…' I said, wishing that I did not love him so; that it would not break me again when he died.
"Non omnis moriar," he said simply, so confidently. "Can't she see that I would rather her and death over anything else in this world…?"
"You know not what you ask…"
"What do I ask?" he asked, suddenly passionate.
"I could never change you…" I tried to explain.
"So you can do that then?"
"But I never would…"
"And why not? If you love me…"
"Oh, I love you. You have to understand though, that there's is so much you don't know about my world, my existence. It's… there's so much more to it than just a bite to the neck and immortality."
"It can't be much more… you're proof that it's not all that bad…" he said, with childlike trust in me.
"I'm not like the others… I'm specifically the reason why it is so much more complicated. For me to do that… just know that I could not," I said, trying to explain my deepest secret, my darkest of mysteries, and failing.
"The others? Your family?" he asked.
"Yes. You mustn't tell… love or not, if you tell another living soul, I will be forced to leave."
"But your whole family is…?"
"Yes, but there more of a non-family…" I began, and explained the whole story to him.
At the end of the evening, I exited the car, assuring him I would make it home safely. Then, without his knowledge, I followed his car home, suddenly very paranoid about his safety. Humans died after all. Then, seeing him enter the small house, I ran home to face whatever was to be thrown my way there.
A/N- I really hope I didn't disapoint!
Oh and the Latin Jon recites in this chapter and it's translation:
Non omnis moriar = Not all of me will die.