Shorter than normal chapter, I know. I haven't been updating as quickly as I'd like lately, and I really just wanted to get something up. I should have another full-length chapter up this weekend!
I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Trust
In the days that followed, I was permitted to communicate with Rosalie only over the phone and via computer. It was heartbreaking. She was such a short distance away. I could run there in a couple of minutes, but I wasn't allowed to. Even worse, she wanted to see me as badly as I wanted to see her. I could tell from the sound of her voice.
What surprised me the most about our conversations, though, was how she always seemed to steer the subject away whenever I would try to discuss the options that were available now. I couldn't comprehend this at all. Rosalie had wanted children since even before she'd become a vampire. Now that she had options before her, I couldn't believe she wasn't jumping at the chance, making excited plans, and picking out furnishings for the nursery she would build. When I tried to get her to explain why she wasn't thrilled, she would just say flippantly that there was too much to take in right now. I supposed I could understand that, to an extent. Turning human had been a big pill to swallow.
Carlisle was holding off on turning Aro until he'd had a few more days to observe me to be sure that I behaved as closely to a normal vampire as could be expected. I was definitely far more controlled than I'd been my first time as a newborn. The fact that I now had an additional ability was disconcerting for everyone. Aro worried that he would no longer have his power once he was changed again, which tended to throw a pretty heinous wrench into his plan of re-integrating into the Volturi. Carlisle tried to reassure him; Caius didn't have any special powers and neither did some of the members of the guard. Still, Aro was nearly inconsolable. Or so I'd heard. I wasn't allowed near him either.
Nessie had taken to staying in the main house, since there were two humans who needed the beds at the cabin. The wolves and the remaining 6 members of my family had coordinated shifts to make sure that the humans stayed guarded. I never asked precisely who they were being guarded from, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was me.
I was too busy to feel bothered by this revelation. When I wasn't on the phone with Rosalie, being examined by Carlisle for any abnormalities, or hunting, I was trying to work on my newfound ability. It was slow going. I had absolutely no idea how to control it. I would stare at a space that I wanted to occupy and concentrate. A few days before, when I'd been human, focusing on something that hard would have given me a headache and turned my face blue. Now, all it did was nothing.
Sometimes Nessie or Jasper would sit outside to watch me practice. Nessie would offer words of encouragement ("Oh hey, Emmett, I think I saw your whole body blink for a second! You're making great progress!"), while Jasper would offer good-natured taunts and jeers ("Aw come on, you can do better than that. It's just a couple feet in front of you. Stop getting so frustrated, you're psyching yourself out!"). Neither method of motivation was especially effective. Despite Nessie's insistence that I was improving, I had been completely unable to duplicate the feat I'd performed in my first few minutes after transforming. If Eleazar hadn't told me for certain that it was a gift, I would have been convinced by now that it was just a fluke occurrence, some completely unexplainable force of nature, which had led me to vanish and reappear hundreds of miles away.
On this particular day, I had no audience, so I felt perfectly free to mutter to myself without looking foolish. Nessie had gone for a walk with Jacob, who was still taking the whole "seeing other people" idea like a champ, and Jasper was on "guard the humans" duty with Alice. As much as I would have loved to have been chatting with Rosalie, she needed a fair amount of human time, and I was happy to respect her needs.
"Okay, Emmett, we can do this," I gave myself a pep talk, staring at the space between two trees where I'd been trying for days to teleport. Half an hour later, when I still hadn't moved so much as an inch, I tried a different approach. "Dammit, Emmett, if you don't do this, I'm going to punch you," I threatened. When nothing happened after another half hour, I punched myself in the face as hard as I could. "I warned you!" I shouted.
A soft chuckle from the doorway of the house caused me to whirl around and drop into a crouch without thinking. I straightened when I realized it was Edward.
"How much of that did you see?" I moaned.
"Enough to know that I don't really want to cross you. You seem to follow through on your threats."
"Yeah, well... Nothing else was working," I grumbled. "I don't get it. I've been at this for days. I did it once. I don't know why I can't do it now." I sauntered over to Edward and sat on the porch steps to take a break. It wasn't so much that I needed a break, not physically anyway. My mind was just utterly exhausted from trying repeatedly and being disappointed every time.
"I'm not certain I'm the best person to talk to about how to utilize your skills," Edward remarked.
That was probably true. He just did what he did naturally. He didn't have to think about it or put anything into action, and in fact, he couldn't purposefully block it out if he tried. Taking that into consideration, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that there was such a learning curve on what I could do. It would be pretty freaky if I was teleporting around all over the place without trying to.
Edward chuckled again. "Yes, that would be inconvenient," he agreed. "I do have one theory. The time you were able to successfully use your capability, you wanted desperately to be far away. You didn't just coach yourself to want it. You truly wanted it with every fiber of your being. Somehow, I doubt that occupying the space between those two trees holds much meaning to you."
"No, it doesn't," I agreed readily. "I don't really have a tree fetish." So I needed to think of something that would motivate me further? Well, the only thing I truly wanted was to be near Rosalie, but that had been deemed a monumentally horrible idea by everyone. Still... What if she wanted me around as badly as I wanted to be there? I didn't know if I could hold out much longer as it was. If I knew that she wanted the same thing... I looked to Edward for guidance.
"I don't know," he said quietly.
"I'm not asking you to take responsibility for my decisions, Edward. I'm just asking you what she wants."
"I don't know," he repeated each word individually.
I had misunderstood. I had taken his initial "I don't know" as a form of hesitation, when in reality, he was telling me that he didn't know how Rosalie felt.
"Bella's still shielding her?" I cried incredulously. "Come on, what more could she want? She's already human. She can't be plotting anything else!" I began to panic. "What more could she possibly want to hide from you?"
"It isn't just her," Edward sighed. "A few hours after Rosalie became human, my daughter's thoughts disappeared as well, and finally Jacob's shortly after that."
I sucked in a sharp breath. "You don't think there's anything wrong with your mind-reading, do you?"
"I had considered that possibility," Edward allowed cautiously. "I have no difficulty with Aro's thoughts though, nor with yours, or Carlisle's, or Jasper's, or anyone other than my wife, your wife, my daughter, and her wolf."
"Has the world gone insane?" Honestly, unless Rosalie was planning to leave me again, I didn't know what she could possibly have up her sleeve at this point. I froze, turning that thought over in my head. Maybe she wanted us to both grow old together, and she was trying to figure out a way to make that happen. I groaned inwardly. I didn't think I could take being abandoned by her again, no matter what the end result might be. This was far too much drama to throw at me in far too short of a time. I wasn't used to being the angsty one. I much preferred to be the passive observer, watching the drama unfold while subjecting everyone to my various witty remarks.
Edward snorted. "Your remarks aren't that witty."
"Hey, I'm full of mad wit," I retorted. "Why, in some circles, I'm known as Emmett the Wit."
"What circles are those?" Edward grinned crookedly.
I scratched a circle around myself in the concrete. "This one!"
Edward examined my artwork with a critical eye. "Looks more like an oblong to me."
"What are you talking about? That's a perfect circle. It's just that you're looking at it from an angle. If you were standing here, you'd see the perfection," I informed him.
Edward rose and moved fluidly toward where I sat. I scooted to one side to allow him to stand in the center and admire my handiwork properly. "Emmett, in all of the times we've been through high school, did you ever pay attention during geometry class at all? Are you quite certain you know what a circle looks like?"
"Yes, it looks like this, and you're standing dead in the middle of the circle where I'm known as Emmett the Wit, so I'd appreciate it if you'd address me as such," I shot back.
"Well, I'm not sure how much it looks like a circle, but I do know that you're going to get a good look at what a tongue-lashing looks like when Esme sees what you've done to her porch steps." Edward quirked an eyebrow, waiting for my horrified reaction.
I didn't disappoint. "Crap! I didn't even think about that. Esme's going to kill me," I wailed. Sure, I was a big tough newborn, but that didn't stop me from being scared of whatever punishment my mother would come up with. No matter how old one gets to be, one never stops fearing their mother's wrath.
"Looks like she has some labor available for the addition she's been wanting to build onto the house," Edward commented.
"Addition?" This, I hadn't heard about.
"She hasn't actually mentioned it yet, but she's spent quite a bit of time thinking about it," he informed me. "I'm sure you've noticed that Bella, Renesmee, and I have been spending more time here than at the cabin in the last year or so."
"Honeymoon finally over?" I winked.
"Hardly," Edward smiled devilishly. "All the same, we do not require as much 'alone time' as we once did, and we do enjoy the company of the rest of the family. Esme has been thinking that, since we seem to be staying in Forks for the foreseeable future, it might be nice for Renesmee to have a room of her own where she can sleep, store her clothes, and so forth rather than simply keeping a few things in my old room."
"Oh, that makes a lot of sense actually," I agreed. "Although I'm not sure about the timing. I mean, we really don't know how things are going to turn out now with Rosalie. She has a lot of decisions to make, and now she's hiding something major from you—Hey, wait a minute!" I accused. "You've just been trying to distract me from getting worked up about what she's plotting, haven't you?"
"It was working remarkably well until now."
I narrowed my eyes at my brother. For his part, he wore a perfectly serene expression, arms relaxed at his side. We might have been sitting around discussing the weather or the fauna for all the excitement he was displaying. "Aren't you at all concerned that Bella is hiding the thoughts of half the family from you?"
"I trust Bella's judgment," Edward shrugged. "I am not a perfect man, Emmett—"
"—The Wit," I interjected.
Edward glowered at me for a moment before continuing. "I will freely admit to having made a number of mistakes when I first began to court Bella. Nearly all of those mistakes revolved around failing to trust her judgment. I may be a slow learner, but it would seem that I can be taught eventually," he grinned again.
"So that's it?" I growled. "I don't get to find out what my wife is hiding because you trust Bella's judgment?"
"Perhaps you should learn to trust Rosalie's judgment as well," Edward remarked.
"Yes, because that's worked out so well for me the past couple of weeks," I answered tersely.
"Actually, I believe you'll find it has." With that, Edward turned and went back inside, leaving Emmett the Wit to sit alone with his thoughts.
Had things really worked out? I thought back to how life had been weeks ago, before Aro had vanished from Alice's vision. We were one big happy family. Rosalie wasn't happy, exactly, but she was close. Now though, I could hear the possibilities in her voice, even if she wasn't ready to talk about them yet. She perpetually sounded like someone who was on the verge of discovering or doing something phenomenal and was holding back only for fear of taking the next leap.
It wasn't just Rosalie whose life had improved either. As a direct result of what had happened to me, I'd opened up a pathway to happiness for Nessie. Weeks ago, she'd been on the precipice of quietly resigning herself to a life she hadn't chosen. She may still choose Jacob in time, but now she knew that she had other options. Jacob didn't actually seem bothered at all about her choices, so no one was really damaged by this particular change.
Leah, too, had been changed for the better. If Nessie had never gone on a date with Josh, Leah might never have met Isaac, and her life may never have begun to make sense again. Leah would always be Leah, of course. She'd always be headstrong and short-tempered, and the damage that Sam had done to her was a scar she would always carry with her. Now though, she had something other than bitterness and loss to focus her attentions. She had hope.
Because of what had happened, relations between my family and the wolves was better than ever. Bella's minor slip hadn't been held against us, since I'd taken full responsibility for it. We were permitted to come and go to La Push as we pleased, and the pack had placed its faith in Carlisle's judgment. Yet another thing which may never have happened without my five-day stint as a human.
If all of those things weren't enough, there existed a very real possibility that we might not need to live in fear of the Volturi any longer soon. Aro had grown to care for us and respect us, and more importantly, he'd grown to understand the consequences of his actions. His remorse would never undo the atrocities he'd already committed, but he could begin to atone for his past misdeeds. I still wasn't sure we could trust him to be true to his word. Once he was back in Volterra, who knew if he might slip right back into his old habits in a matter of months or years? All the same, there was a chance that our kind could finally have benevolent rulers who punished wrongdoers instead of wrongly accusing. That was more than we'd ever had before.
All of these things had come about because of Rosalie's judgment.
Edward was right. I needed to try to trust her.
