I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.
Chapter Thirty Six – Change
Anyone other than Alice would be uncertain as to what happened next. They would have wondered if I wanted to leave the forest or simply shift immediately, wondered how I planned on getting to where I would shift, and wondered where, precisely, that was. Alice had the advantage of always knowing what happened next, but her gifts gave her no inkling of the reasons behind them. We trod back to where I had parked the Cadillac Escalade three months before, during a time when I'd had hope for my own future. She had a vision of herself driving, so she immediately hopped into the driver's seat, mercifully allowing me to sink into the passenger's seat with my thoughts.
Despite having been abandoned for so long, the SUV's engine turned over on the third try and ran as strongly as it must have on the day it was driven from the showroom. Alice pointed the car in the proper direction to travel back to Forks. She piloted the vehicle at an uncommonly human speed, doing her best to avoid looking at the future where only confusion awaited her. In the absence of the gifts that would have permitted her to ascertain when a police officer was lurking nearby and preoccupied with attempting to keep her thoughts blank, my sister didn't feel confident in her ability to evade law enforcement. She also worried how I would fare around humans, having been completely isolated from them for the entire summer.
We sat in silence as Alice drove. She already knew the way, having run here from Forks. Although she made a solid effort to keep from pressuring me into talking until I was ready, her confused thoughts would occasionally make their way to the surface. What's this about Edward and Bella having a daughter? What happened to Bella to make her like that? Why is Edward dead? Why am I dead? I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, trying to think of the most succinct explanation. I did need to explain everything to my sister before we reached our family's home. She needed to understand what kind of mess she'd be walking into.
Alice saw my gesture and smiled, then immediately felt guilty for her mirthful expression. "Sorry Edward. It's just that I always picture you doing that, but it's been so long since I've actually seen it," she said apologetically.
"It's all right," I replied, trying to keep my voice level. The silence had been broken now. We were still two hours away from Forks, and I had plenty of time to cover the situation with Alice. Where to begin?
"I understand how difficult that must have been for you," Alice tried to comfort me.
"I don't think you do," I replied, my voice seeming to come from somewhere outside of my own body. "You were right, though. As usual." This Bella was truly lost to me. It wouldn't have mattered how long I'd remained in her territory; I would never have been able to be with her. Only near her. Somewhere in my mind, I had known this all along, but after so many disappointments, I was unwilling—or unable—to give in to the truth. I had been determined to mold this universe into what I so desperately wanted it to be, and I had wasted precious months of Bella's life in the world where I might eventually find her. I began to panic, worrying that these months I'd wasted could have been the last of my own Bella's life, wherever she was. Hadn't I determined that this was a race against the clock? I moaned softly to myself, contemplating what I would do if I turned out to already be too late.
Alice, unaware of the turmoil taking place in my head, responded only to my spoken words. "I wish I could have had better news for you," she said wistfully.
I cleared my throat, ready to change the subject to matters which were, for the moment at least, of greater urgency. I recalled the words Emmett had spoken to me in Universe Four with regard to the love triangle between himself, Bella, and Jacob. And what's worrying about it change, in the end? I worry about it and she picks me, and all I did was waste my time worrying. I worry about it and she picks him, and all I did was wreck the good memories I could've had before she made her choice. I tried to apply Emmett Four's philosophy to my own situation. If I worried about this matter and it wasn't too late already, all I'd done was waste time with my worrying. If I worried about this matter and it already was too late… Well, I wouldn't be bringing her back from the dead whether I worried or not, would I? I firmly pushed my trepidation aside, vowing to give it no more thought for the moment.
"Alice, there are some things you should know before we get back to Forks," I began.
Alice breathed a sigh of relief. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to push you to fill me in on things," she commented.
"The answers to all of the questions you've been trying so hard not to think about are very closely intertwined. Bella and Edward did indeed have a daughter in this universe. Quite a few more adventures took place prior to their wedding, but few of those stories are relevant to the matter at hand presently. The one point of importance is that Bella developed a very close relationship with Jacob Black, one of the Quileute wolves." Alice choked a gasp back in her throat, wanting very much to avoid interrupting me. "She didn't know he was a wolf in the beginning; in fact, he hadn't even begun to transform yet. The two of them actually fell in love, for a time, but she loved Edward far more.
"During their honeymoon, Bella and Edward succeeded in doing what Carlisle thought impossible and conceived a child. The—" I struggled to think of an appropriate word. What was the equivalent of biracial when one of the individuals was an entirely different species? "—hybrid child developed at a greatly accelerated rate in the womb, going from conception to birth in just under one month." Once more, Alice had to work hard to force herself from reacting overtly to this information. I continued, "The advanced rate of growth alone would have harmed Bella's body, but because the fetus was actually stronger than her, it was essentially killing her. Edward and Carlisle had wanted to abort in the beginning, but Bella was determined to carry to term, and Rosalie was on her side, for reasons which I'm sure you can imagine.
"Throughout the process, Bella's other love, Jacob Black, spent a great deal of time at her side. The delivery of the baby was particularly messy, and there are no words quite strong enough to properly express how very near to death Bella was as a result of this birth. Edward had planned to turn Bella quickly, but Jacob became enraged, apparently believing that Bella was dead and blaming Edward. He transformed into a wolf and killed Edward on the spot." Alice gazed sadly at the road ahead, trying to imagine how she would have reacted if it had been her own Edward, me, who had been killed in that way.
"Carlisle had some difficulty getting into the room to work on beginning Bella's transformation. Edward had had a plan in place of injecting venom directly into her heart, but the vial of venom had been destroyed during his scuffle with Jacob. Bella had been left untreated for precious minutes, resulting in oxygen deprivation to her brain. Carlisle isn't certain whether her brain was damaged, whether it was the delay in beginning her transformation, or whether it was the extent of her injuries, but Bella took an uncommonly long time to undergo the full transformation." I tried to gloss over the full length of time Bella had burned, but Alice was speculating in her head and was nowhere near the correct answer, so I filled in the gaps. "She burned for a total of eight days," I told her.
Alice had no memories of her own transformation and had never personally witnessed a vampire-to-human change, so these words had only a fraction of the impact on her that they would have had on any other of our kind. Still, she understood that this was highly irregular and must have been unbearable for Bella.
"Carlisle isn't sure, once again, whether it was the length of the transformation or the factors that may have existed before she was changed which caused her to lose her… more evolved sensibilities," I choked out. "Whatever the case may be, Bella is as you saw her. I feel uniquely qualified to say that there is no hope of her miraculously regaining her higher reasoning capabilities." As hard as I tried to make my voice sound passive and clinical, there was no fooling my sister. She took her right hand off the steering wheel and placed it in my left, offering me her comfort. I took a breath and continued, knowing that the rest of the story needed to be told before we reached Forks.
"In the meantime, Jacob saw the baby on his way out of the house and imprinted on her." Alice's brow furrowed. She was unfamiliar with this term, never having learned as much about the wolves as I had over the past few months. "It's something the wolves do," I explained. "It's an amplified form of love at first sight, and it renders the wolf a sort of prisoner to the will of their imprint. It's a happy sort of prison for the wolf though; nothing brings them greater happiness than to please their imprint. They live and breathe for the target of their imprinting, who becomes their entire universe." This concept was not entirely unfamiliar to Alice, since it was very similar in many ways to how vampires fell in love. She nodded, indicating that I should continue.
"He wanted to be near the baby, but the family feared for the baby's life. Moments before, Jacob had murdered Edward and had blamed him for impregnating Bella with a baby who had ended her life, from his point of view. Without Edward to read his thoughts and determine how sincere he may have been, they had no other choice than to assume that he meant to do the baby harm in revenge for killing Bella. They would not allow him near the baby.
"For six months, Jacob refused to go home. He stayed on the front porch, begging to be let in to see the baby. He sent for other members of the pack—while in wolf form, they are able to communicate telepathically—who had imprinted and asked them to explain the situation to the family. They would not relent, still angry with him for killing Edward and frightened of what he might do." I hesitated, knowing that I was reaching the part of the story that would be the most difficult for Alice to hear. "After six months, the wolves made a strike on the house. They tricked the family into believing that Jacob had finally taken his leave of them, and Carlisle and Esme left to track down Bella. The entire pack came back that night with only Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie to defend the baby.
"Although, as I understand it, all four of them fought valiantly, the wolves ascertained that Alice was the weakest link in that particular battle and killed her. With her dead, Jasper was unable to continue fighting, and Jacob was able to slip in to kidnap the baby while the rest of the pack kept Emmett and Rosalie occupied. That was two years ago. The baby hasn't been seen since." I finished the tale, waiting for the stream of questions that Alice was sure to have. I didn't have to wait long.
"I couldn't see the wolves, so I had no idea how to fight them," Alice whispered miserably. "Just like how I couldn't see them attacking Laurent." She sat quietly for several seconds. "What's the baby's name?"
Of all the questions Alice could have asked, I wasn't expecting this to be her first. "Renesmee," I answered. "It's a combination of—"
"Bella's mother and Edward's mother, I get it," Alice grinned. A dark expression overtook her features a moment later. "How is he?"
I didn't need to ask to whom she was referring. "You remember how I was, I assume?"
"Oh no…"
"With me, no one around me had to feel what I was feeling," I said, a bit more ominously than I'd intended.
Alice closed her eyes in pain, taking in the implication of what the entire family had been forced to endure. I actually needed to remind her that she was driving and should therefore watch the road. "Sorry," she mumbled, opening her eyes. "Well," she said, her voice brightening up slightly, "we'll be away from here soon." She withdrew the device once again and showed me, while keeping most of her attention on the road, how to use the device's improved settings to pinpoint my home universe and return there, as well as how to use its "randomizer" feature to continue doing what I'd already spent the summer doing.
"This alters my plans a little," she confessed. "I had hoped we'd be able to get Carlisle from this universe to swap the device you have in your skin for this one. It looks like we'll have to go back home first and get our own Carlisle to do it. I don't know what I'm going to tell Jasper, but I'll think of something." Out of habit, she tried to search the future for something involving our own Jasper, having momentarily forgotten that she was limited to only looking in whatever future she currently occupied. She immediately gasped in plain agony, nearly veering the SUV into a ditch. She had caught a vision of this universe's Jasper and seen how he lived every day.
"There's something I need to do before we leave," I told her quietly. "Now that you've seen why, perhaps I won't need to spend the next hour convincing you."
Alice took her eyes off the road once again, causing me to cringe and grab the steering wheel. She blinked at me repeatedly, making every effort to keep her mouth shut and avoid gaping openly at me. "Edward, you're going to—"
"Yes," I interrupted. "He deserves the opportunity. His life is miserable here, Alice, and he's making everyone around him miserable too. Somewhere, there simply must exist a universe where Jasper didn't survive his early life in the South and you moved in with the Cullens by yourself. And unlike my own journey, his has no expiration date. You've been a vampire for decades. He quite literally has forever to search for you."
Alice muttered something incomprehensible under her breath, and I avoided looking into her mind to find out what it was. "Fine," she said. I had a feeling that I would have had a much more difficult time convincing her if it had been any member of the family other than Jasper. "At least that doesn't alter my plan," she added.
"What plan?" I still had no idea what she'd been talking about when she alluded to needing to tell her own Jasper something.
"Well, remember when I told you why I was the one who came looking for you?" she asked sheepishly.
"Of course. It just happened this morning," I jabbed lightly at my sister.
"That wasn't—it was the reason I gave to everyone else, but it wasn't the whole reason," she confessed. "I'm going to come along to help you."
It was my turn to stare at Alice, and I was much less successful than she at making my face less blatantly shocked than I felt. "Alice, you can't," I informed her simply. "The pain of shifting alone… And Jasper, he needs you!"
"Edward, we'll get this done so much faster if I go along. Each time we get to a new place, I'll search my visions for Bella and tell you if she's alive, if she's with you, if she's with somebody else. We won't even need to leave the clearing unless something is fuzzy or confusing to me. I suppose if she doesn't have a future at all, we'll have to investigate whether it's because something happened to her or whether it's because she's with Jacob, but apart from that, I would guess that I can get you through this in less than one-fifth the time it would otherwise take." She spoke proudly of her abilities, which was somewhat unusual for my sister. Typically, she just viewed them as something she could do, in much the same way anyone else might speak of being able to hear or taste.
"Alice, no." I told her firmly. "I can handle this on my own."
My sister looked extraordinarily hurt. "Please, Edward. Please let me do this for you. It's my fault that she…" Alice's voice faltered, her words catching in her throat. She still blamed herself for the incident with Laurent that had taken my own Bella's life, and she now wanted to come along with me to make it up to me by accelerating the process that would lead me to Bella again. If I denied her the chance to help, she would go on blaming herself forever unless and until she heard from me again. I truly had no way of knowing how long this would take, and since my backup plan continued to be death, it seemed plausible that she may never hear from me again. Thus, she would go on blaming herself forever. I wondered silently whether Alice was somehow aware of my contingency plan and had come to "babysit" me and prevent that particular outcome. Regardless, I was backed into a corner.
"Remember what you predicted about two Edwards giving you headaches?" I asked her. She nodded, and I made my point. "You were right. All of the other Alices I've encountered have had headaches, so long as there was an Edward in their own universe."
"I'll just stick to looking for Bella's future then. If I can't find her, I'll look for Edward. I can put up with headaches now and again." Alice was being extraordinarily stubborn, but she was beginning to see that she was winning. A tiny, smug smile was forming on her face as I sighed. She had a point. It might be nice to avoid the daily interrogations with the Cullen family in each universe. We would be saving Esme countless tables and pillows if I never had to have another long, emotional discussion with the family.
"We'll try it," I allowed. "But if the headaches get to be too much for you—"
"They won't, they won't!" Alice squealed in delight, not allowing me to place conditions on my agreement.
"—I'll take you home immediately," I finished. "And if it looks like we'll be gone more than a couple of weeks, we have to go back and you'll need to find something to tell Jasper. He might assume that you ran into trouble finding me, but any longer than that and he'll be worried sick."
Alice agreed readily, taking both hands off the steering wheel to clap excitedly. I grumbled and gripped the wheel again, not particularly anxious to have another near-incident with the SUV. "And I get to see Bella again!" My sister seemed nearly as happy about this prospect as I was. Of course, I should have realized that she missed her friend, whom she also considered to be a sister. A wave of guilt washed over me as I acknowledged that I had never really considered how my family, too, must have mourned Bella's loss. I had been too preoccupied with my own pain to pay it any mind whatsoever. Time and time again, I'd had opportunities to do the right thing, and time and time again, I had failed.
Leaving Bella hadn't only killed her and destroyed me. It had also ruined Charlie's life, as I'd seen in the second place I had visited—although, to be fair, Bella hadn't actually been dead in that universe, but Charlie believed her to be—,and it had damaged my family as well. One decision, by one individual, causing so much destruction, upset, and heartache. If I had made only that one choice differently, so many people would be so much better off. I was truly beginning to forget why I had believed in the first place that leaving Bella was for the best. After all I'd encountered, it seemed obvious that this was a ludicrous course of action. Leave Bella? Such a thing would serve no more purpose than bulldozing my family's home just to watch the supports crumble. In truth, it may have actually been worse. A house could, in short order, be rebuilt or replaced. Bella could only be remembered.
Alice didn't speak again until we were nearly in Forks. Suddenly, she cried out. "Oh no!"
"What is it?" I was alarmed, fearing that she had seen something in the Cullens' future which was even worse than what had already transpired.
"I should have stopped in Seattle to get you some new clothes!"
I snorted. Of all the things to concern herself with… "It's fine," I muttered.
Alice momentarily continued to be distraught, then suddenly, she relaxed. "You're right," she agreed, "it will be fine. I'm sure our family here probably still has some of your clothes left, I'll just run in and pick out—"
"No!" I interrupted her, my voice a bit too harsh. I couldn't meet her gaze when she turned her head once more in my direction. Instead, I stared out the window at the lush green terrain. "No," I repeated, more softly this time.
"Why on Earth not, Edward? You've been there. You think if they see a second dead family member it will push them over the edge?"
"It's not that, it's…" As easily as she'd accepted my desire to send Jasper on the same journey as my own, it would be nearly impossible for her to recognize that he could actually present a danger to her. In his current mental state, if Alice suddenly walked into the house, his actions could not be predicted. He might become elated, which could be mildly dangerous if he broke her bones by embracing her too hard, but she would heal. It was equally possible, however, that he would think she was an illusion, or worse, that someone was deliberately attempting to deceive him. In that case, it was entirely possible that he might kill her, just to prove to himself that she wasn't real. I didn't find this outcome particularly likely, but I wasn't willing to gamble Alice's life on the premise that Jasper would readily accept her presence as something readily explainable.
Still, I couldn't tell Alice that I had such little faith in her husband. She would be furious with me for suggesting such a thing was possible. My sister had never had occasion to experience firsthand the loss of her soulmate. She had no idea the depths of madness to which one could be driven, absent half of their soul. Interesting. It seemed I believed I had a soul after all.
"You recall how I was just before you told me about the device?" I decided to try a different approach.
Alice shuddered at the memory. "Of course," she answered.
"And you must surely have realized that I was only in such high spirits because I believed that I would be released from my eternal existence soon?"
Alice made a face not unlike one she might have made if she'd been forced to eat human food. "You call those high spirits?"
"Compared to how I was just before Carlisle called me, yes."
"Fine, so you were a hundred times worse than that. What's your point?"
"Jasper does not believe there is an end in sight." I let that statement hang in the air, hoping that Alice would grasp the meaning on her own.
"Oh come on, what's the worst that could happen? You think I can't handle seeing him like that?" She had missed the point completely.
"I think he can't handle seeing you."
We had arrived at this timeline's version of my family's home, and Alice parked the SUV outside. She made no effort to acknowledge my words, either verbally or silently. Instead, she got out of the car and slammed the door, her jaw set. I growled, ready to tackle her if need be. She surprised me by returning my growl and raising me a hiss. She started to head toward the house, and I chased after her.
Suddenly, Alice crumpled to the ground in a heap, clutching at her sides as if her ribs had come spilling out and she were trying to force them back in. I needn't have followed her after all. Unprepared as she was for the feeling of despair that Jasper was unintentionally emanating, my sister had been overcome by the sense that there was no point in arguing any longer, or in anything at all. Although the feeling was extremely distressing to me as well, I had at least had some idea of what was coming. I reached down and took the improved device from Alice and forced myself onward toward the house, leaving her outside sobbing. I would return for her shortly, by which time Jasper would be in a much better mood.
In addition to the terrible sensation of agony, the house also reeked of werewolf. What had happened in the last three months? Had Jacob returned to kill some more members of my family? I managed to regain control of my emotions enough to panic for a few seconds. Without knocking, I shoved open the door and went inside.
Seth was there, along with a human female I didn't recognize. Both sat just in front of the couch, unmoving, uncaring. The little girl I'd observed briefly in Universe Two was present as well, and she was not in any better mental state than either of them. She seemed to have aged almost a year since I'd last seen her only months before. I didn't know for how long the trio had been present, but I was concerned about the safety of all three of them. Although my family could go on without sustenance for as long as necessary, neither the wolf nor the human would be able to survive indefinitely without food, and I wasn't sure as to whether the hybrid child could either.
I noted vaguely that the phone had been ringing the entire time I'd been in the house, but no one seemed overly concerned about answering it. I, too, didn't feel that answering the phone seemed a necessary task. In fact, coming here in the first place had been pointless. Everything was pointless. There would never be any meaning in anything again.
Carlisle rose from the couch, slowly, deliberately. "Edward," he said softly. "We weren't expecting you to return."
Seth looked up at me in confusion. "Edward? But you're—I mean Jacob—"
"Killed him, yes," Carlisle forced himself to speak through the agony. I was beginning to believe that my father could have found a way to survive if the unthinkable had somehow happened and he had lost Esme. He alone seemed to be able to handle Jasper's mood well enough to function, albeit on a greatly reduced basis. "This Edward comes to us from another timeline." The effort of speaking seemed to have taken a toll on Carlisle, but he still looked at me, a combination of expectance and sadness reflected in his gaze.
"I need… favor…" I was barely able to choke out the words. "My device… I need… I have…" I sighed, pausing to collect my thoughts and becoming lost in the anguish Jasper unwillingly projected around him. After taking a deep breath and forcing myself to think of the Bella that awaited me in another world, I managed to speak clearly. "Someone from my own timeline arrived to give me an improved device. I need you to remove the one implanted under my skin and replace it with the new one." This was all I had energy to say.
Without warning, the mood in the house changed dramatically. The human girl leapt up in alarm. "Oh my goodness!" she cried out. "We've been here for hours! The phone… Paul must be freaking out!" She dashed across the room hastily to answer, not even bothering to ask permission. In the absence of the overwhelming despair, I had enough of my senses to read her thoughts for a few moments. It was, indeed, a wolf named Paul, calling to check on her well-being. He was furious that she hadn't called at the time they'd agreed upon, and he'd been getting ready to come down himself to check on her. He calmed down quickly once she informed him that she was fine, was most definitely still human, but had simply been caught up in an unexpected problem which she was more than capable of handling on her own. She seemed slightly hotheaded, but it reminded me in a way of Bella, which made me smile.
Smile? How was I able to smile? Was Jasper…
"Who was it?" Jasper spoke, and the sound of his voice shocked my parents, as well as my brother and sister to their core. This was the first time they'd heard him utter a single word in months. No one made any move to answer, and no one seemed to understand what he was asking.
"Who was it," he repeated, "who came to give you the device?"
This was not good. If I tried to lie to Jasper, he would sense my emotional turmoil.
As it was, my discomfort was all he needed.
"Where is she?" he demanded. He crossed the room in what seemed like a single step, grabbing me by the shoulders. In his thoughts, I could see that he was momentarily taken aback by the scars I now had covering my neck and arms, but he ignored them completely. "Take me to her now!" he shouted.
Behind us, the human girl was also shouting. "Why didn't you stop him? You idiot, he's going to get himself killed! Well maybe you don't care, but that's my brother you're talking about!"
In all of the commotion, I hadn't paused to consider that Alice, no longer pinned by Jasper's emotional state, would manage to make her way to the doorway. Suddenly, an uncontrollable wave of pure ecstasy overtook the room. Renesmee began to stagger around in a dreamlike state, and the adults in the room were not much more controlled than she.
"Alice!" Jasper released me and fell to his knees.
"Hi everybody," my sister sang out to a shocked roomful of supposedly mythical creatures. Her tone of voice made it clear that she, too, was affected by Jasper's elevated mood. "There's a really big naked guy outside. Well, first he was a really big dog, but then he saw me and turned into a really big naked guy so he could scream at me for trying to trick him. Then he spent the next couple of minutes apologizing for killing me, and now he wants to know if he can please come inside and see Renesmee. If you're going to let him in, can I go upstairs and get him something to wear first?"