Author's Note: Wow, last chapter didn't get as many reviews as the chapters typically do. I think everyone's losing momentum and a couple of the reviews very kindly warned me that they were losing interest and getting a bit of a toothache from the sickeningly sweetness of the last chapter. Yeah, I know it was pretty sappy, but I was sort of lost in the memories of my own son's first year and also it all feeds into Lina's need to savor the peace with her family while she still has it. Anyway, I'm a sappy person and it really showed in the last chapter, but please don't give up now guys…we're seriously in the home stretch, getting really close to the big action I've been foreshadowing from the beginning of ITSOTD and if you stop reading now you'll miss all of the action. Hope you guys are still reading out there. Anyway, here's the newest update. It is another fairly short one and yet once again stretches long periods of time and has a lot of summarizing of the events that have been taking place. Hope you enjoy.
36. Leading a Double Life
As my life continued on and days turned into weeks and months, it really seemed like I lived a double life. During the day I was Lina Clearwater, wife, mother, and teacher, who spent her days cleaning up after a messy toddler while teaching him about colors and shapes and how to use his manners, caring for our home, spending time reminding my husband how much I loved him, and teaching my students the finer points of creative writing and classic literature.
Then when the evening came my life took on a darker shade as I struggled to increase my defensive skills in hand to hand combat and advanced weapons training at various nearby dojos and continued helping my father and brother research the properties and venom and what happens when you combine it with different types of metals in an attempt to create a weapon that would be of some sort of use against vampire skin. It was one of the few endeavors that I didn't feel guilty sinking copious amounts of the Cullen fortune into funding.
Unfortunately the research was slow and daunting. No matter what we tried it always turned into a disaster. Our biggest problem was in order for the metal to be hot enough to be molten and combine with the venom in some form it would inevitably be too hot to keep the highly flammable venom from combusting into roaring flames. In the same vein, anything that could be shaped and controlled at cooler temperatures that would not ignite the venom would inevitably be far too weak to survive impact with a substance as hard and strong as vampire skin. It seemed the harder we tried the more disappointing the results became.
It was a struggle to keep my life balanced and it saddened me when I would think about how little time I had left over between caring for my own family and preparing for the dark future ahead to spend with the rest of my family. I only got to see the rest of my siblings for any type of social call once a month if I was lucky. Thankfully my son and husband were able to spend a lot more time with them than I did and Gabe was very close with all of his aunts and uncles as well as his grandparents.
Looking back at his earlier days, it's kind of humorous to think about how concerned I was with Gabe's limited vocabulary because pretty much the minute he turned two he started talking away and never seemed to stop. The kid had an insatiable curiosity constantly questioning everything and then asking you to expand upon your answer. I heard the words "But Why?" more times in a single day than most people would hear them in an entire month. While yes, it did get annoying at times getting to the point where I would simply answer "To make you ask why" or "because I said so" just to finally end the interrogations, it also made me happy to know that he actually had a very inquisitive view of the world and a hunger for knowledge that I wanted to encourage…well most of the time at least.
Gabe was also all boy. That urge to climb and the incredible energy that had him running by the time he turned one did not diminish as he got older. By the time he was two it was almost like I was watching two toddlers instead of just one as he would zoom around in a whirlwind of energy. Even though he was active and overflowing with energy, Gabe was also a very sweet, kind, caring, and extremely friendly child. He never seemed to meet a stranger and always had an amazing capacity to empathize with others. He was a handful and a half, but he really was a good kid.
Knowing how difficult it was to get pregnant the first time around with Gabe, Seth and I decided when Gabe was nearly two that it was time to start trying for our second child. We knew she was in our future, and we had a general idea of how far apart in age they would be, so we didn't stress over everything quite as much as we did with Gabe. I knew another pregnancy would hinder my preparing for the coming battle, but I also knew that this baby girl was destined to be in our future. The December after Gabe turned two we had another little stick tell us with two little pink lines that our baby girl was on her way.
With the knowledge that no matter what happened, this baby would most likely be my last, I took a big step and resigned from my teaching position at the school. The pack kids were very disappointed that I wouldn't be around every day with them anymore, but I told them all that no matter what we were all a part of the pack family and would remain close and that they could come visit me any time.
Once my job was no longer an issue, and training was impossible, I put my full energy into two things, spending every possible moment with my husband, son, and extended family and kicking the research Dad, Edward, and I were doing into full gear. We finally gave up on taking any earth bound alloy and trying to combine it in any way with venom and began looking at alternative ways to manipulate the venom itself. We had learned that venom could be crystallized under the right conditions created through the use of liquid nitrogen, but we couldn't seem to actually manipulate the crystals into any specific pattern or form.
Our research was dangerous and I was quickly beginning to get disheartened. My father and Edward were constantly encouraging me not to give up, but I was beginning to feel hopeless. I fought hard to hold onto the hope that a brighter future was ahead for us, a happy ending to the drama that haunted my dreams. My dreams provided me with a lot of detail, but it always led up to the moment before I would make my move and then it would stop. I never got to see the actual battle, if anyone was hurt, if anyone was saved, if I survived, or if it was all for naught…all I knew was that I had to do something, to find a way, for some reason I was going to be the key. The more failures we had in finding any kind of answers, the more depressed I became. I began to wonder if I could do anything or if I couldn't see the rest of the event because there was nothing to be done, if my dream ended because at that moment I would die and since I was no longer alive I was not allowed to know what happened beyond my death.
I went on in this state of flux for weeks. One minute I would manage to lose myself in the moment as I spent precious time with my son or my siblings or my husband, and then the next I would be as low as I could be. Of course, I'm sure my pregnancy hormones didn't help much with that either, but the mental strain was making my emotional valleys far more deep and dark than they had ever been during my pregnancy with Gabe.
My first pregnancy had been a relative breeze compared to this pregnancy. My morning sickness was definitely worse and my blood pressure continued to spike often, most likely due to my stress levels. It was during my first sonogram when the doctor handed me a stack of pamphlets about pregnancy, motherhood, and cord blood donation that the epiphany hit and I ran straight to my family's home to consult Edward and my father on my idea. They questioned my sanity at first and then conceded that it was worth a shot. That same day my father sent off for the samples of Gabe's cord blood that we had banked upon his birth. I prayed he would never need it in the future and consoled myself with the thought that if I couldn't find a way to keep him safe, he would have no future in which he would need it. As soon as the vials arrived we began to carefully plan our newest experiments desperate not to waste the precious elixir stored inside the tiny vials.
My epiphany proved to be useful. We began to manipulate the function of venom on human cells in order to manufacture exactly what we had been hoping for. The idea had been a stroke of genius that had to have been implanted in my head directly from God himself. We worked together for days working out formulas and ways in which to make the venom work on the stem cells located in Gabe's cord blood to do as we desired.
Stem cells in a human are basically a blank slate, they can become anything the body needs it to be, so with a little manipulation we finally figured out a way to force the venom manipulated stem cells to link and form into a complex razor sharp strip of material very similar to vampire teeth in sharpness and texture and yet more of a long flexible strip not unlike a long thin strip of aluminum.
The day we managed to create the very first prototype of the new material I felt true hope for the first time in ages. It was dangerous and difficult to work with the new material for all of us, as we soon found out the first time Edward cut himself with the material while trying to move it from one petri dish to another and stupidly deciding to push it against his finger with a little force to see what it would do. It was a tiny cut, but it proved that the material would in fact do exactly as we hoped. We were a long, long way from being able to figure out a way to weaponize it in any way, shape, or form considering that if even the vampires couldn't handle the material then there would be no way a human could ever handle it. We had time to figure those things out though. The first major step in the process was thankfully completed and for the first time in months I felt like maybe we would have a real chance after all.
When we finally made our major discovery with the stem cells I finally took a real step back from the whole process and fully submerged myself into the world of my family. I began spending all of my time, day or night, with either my son or my husband or one of my siblings. I knew these last few days, weeks, and months were very precious and I was done wasting them with worry. I was now fully prepared to enjoy my pregnancy, the birth of my last baby, and the childhood of my wonderful and precious son. Above all I wanted to make sure that no matter what happened to me in the future that he would have good memories of our time together and he would know beyond any doubt how very much I loved him. I hated how much time I was spending away from him trying to prepare for what was to come, but in reality it was all for him. I loved him more than life itself and I was determined to keep him safe no matter what.
Author's Note: I'm struggling with the fine balance of moving the story along and yet trying not to skip too much or make it too detached. I hope I'm doing okay. I'm not entirely sure when I will be able to update again. We are going on vacation for a week beginning Memorial day weekend and won't be back until that next weekend and in the meantime I need to be getting us packed and organized, get the oil changed in the car and make sure it's safe for travel, etc…so I'm guessing I probably won't be able to squeeze in another update until sometime in June. I never know when inspiration will strike or when time will avail itself to me to write, and we will be taking the laptop with us, so if it doesn't make me too dizzy to type while driving, then I might utilize our 12 hours in the car each way to see if I can write some more. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you that there will probably be a bit of a wait before the next update. Thanks for reading and please take time to review! Oh and Happy Mother's Day!