-Chapter Thirty Seven: Twist, Break, Fuse-
'And in the dark I could hear your heartbeat, -Florence and the Machine
I tried to find the sound.
But then it stopped and I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became.
The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.
You've left me in the dark.
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight,
In the shadow of your heart.'
-Edward-
My own pain was starting to reflect in the face of those around me, much to my distorted amusement. It had begun with Esme, the most expressive when it came to any kind of sympathy or concern; evolved into Alice and finally spread to everyone else; visible mainly in fleeting glances and sad smiles. A thick, stifling sympathy was heavy in the air each time I had ventured downstairs. The first time I'd left the attic had coincided with the day decorating and repairs had commenced. I could hear laughter and voices as I made my way down the stairs and then the noises had stopped; they'd sensed my arrival and the atmosphere thickened almost tangibly. I felt like a stranger amongst them; uncomfortable in the presence of my family, for the first time in recollection.
After that, I had been downstairs only a very few times and each of those times had been at the insistence of Rosalie, stating that if I didn't take a bath, she was going to upend and bucket of water over me.
Rosalie was the only person whose eyes I could bear to meet. She didn't look at me as though I had been diagnosed with a terminal disease. She didn't treat me like glass. Her eyes did not reflect my broken heart; hurt, torn and impossibly raw. She treated me almost like normal; showed no favouritism or extra kindness. I took comfort in that, if nothing else, and after a month I was able to leave the attic for a period of time longer than an hour, so long as Rosalie was there with me.
Waiting for the vintage, clawfoot bathtub to fill with scalding hot water, I tried to ignore the thoughts that reached me effortlessly, plaguing any fragile sense of stability I had managed to construct in the few minutes I had been downstairs.
This was my seventeenth time now, leaving the secluded safety of the attic. I spent most of my downstairs time, in the bath. The water had a way of drowning out my thoughts, as well as everyone else's. I would stay under for as long as possible, before someone else would need to use the bathroom. After half an hour, my body would start to cool the red hot water and soon enough, someone would knock politely on the door and I'd have to leave; retreat almost immediately upstairs to take refuge in the darkness and isolation.
My family worried I was becoming a recluse; suffering from some complex form of agoraphobia. I had been hunting a few times, with Emmett and Rosalie, though it was more to satisfy the concerns of Carlisle and Esme than my own hunger. That marked the few occasions I had gone outside the walls of our new house since arriving there. Those occasions had taken supreme amounts of effort.
It was difficult now, to build up the momentum and energy to move. There was so little will power to move; no real desire to stand and exist and involve myself in life. Such things required self-discipline, which was in increasingly short supply. Most days and nights I was content to sit silently and alone, lost inside my mind. Memories and remnants of absent touches; ghosts of kisses and smiles from a girl who had felt warm and real; who was beautifully fragile and everything to my happiness.
Long gone, of course. The light and tentative warmth of what had been happiness was simply gone. It was like being given eyesight for a short time, after being a lifelong blind. I could recall all too well the softness of her warm, tissue thin skin; her scent, her voice, her smile, her hair, her eyes. I'd thought her name so often that it started to sound strange and foreign with too much repetition.
The pain was constant and unending, so much so that I was starting to build an immunity against it. It was always there, no matter what I did. A low humming sound in the back of my mind; an ache in my bones, a tear in the flesh of my soul. I loved her so much...Bella. My Bella was no longer mine.
I shook my head, recognising the danger signals. If I allowed myself to fall too deeply into that deep swell of agony, I would not be able to resurface again without help. And the only person who could help me, my anchor to what remained of this world, was not currently there. It was the first time I had ventured downstairs without her and it had taken me at least an hour to work up the determination, or more accurately the courage, to do so.
Nothing made sense, nothing felt safe, nothing seemed familiar...except for her. She made sense. She felt safe. She was familiar. It was ironic, but not so very unexpected that Rosalie would become my lifeline during such a time. Of all the people around me who knew and loved me, she was the only one I could trust enough to help me. She was the only one who wouldn't lie and tell me things were alright when they weren't. She wouldn't smile or neglect to mention if I left wet towels all over the bathroom floor. She'd shout and yell and make me feel as though I did still exist, because I was pissing her off.
Of all the things in my universe, she was the one thing I leaned into for support. The one thing that could hold me up, hold me together...hold me. I knew on some distant, rational level that I was falling apart. That despite the trips downstairs and the attempts at conversation, I was getting worse. She knew it too and every time it because obvious, every single time it seemed as though my decline was inevitable, she would get angry. She'd scowl and scathe, sitting opposite me in the dark, dusty attic and she'd hurt me just enough to bring out some long lost defences and make me realise I was still there. Make me see I hadn't slipped away just yet.
Sometimes I cried. Moments when my eternal, immortal body was too weak to contain what raged and clawed inside of it, I'd cry. Tears, sobs and breathless gasps to a nonexistent deity, begging for forgiveness that would never come. And Rosalie would be there next to me, the only time she ever touched me now. She'd sit beside me, silent and unmoving. No words, no lies, no pitiful platitudes. She would just be there, trying to take as much as of my pain as she could. Sometimes it was enough to regain control, some days it wasn't. But she came and sat with me, regardless. I saw her everyday in the attic. She would come at different times, always with a book. She'd come inside, closing the door behind her and just sit there, reading. Waiting for me to speak if I wanted to. She wanted nothing in exchange, just to be there for me. Just to help me as best she could without giving into that most basic of instincts. I had never seen her so...human.
Some days I hated her and I'd tell her as much. Some days I blamed her...for everything. I'd sneer insults and cruelties at her, quietly enough so that no-one could hear it but us. I would accuse her of orchestrating Bella's injury; of trying to separate us. I told her I didn't love her and never would and that she would never compare to Bella. And she would just turn the page, trying not to ignore me but more to let what I was saying simply pass her by. It hurt her, I knew from the resonance of her mind, but she never left. Never retorted. That temper, so ready to spring forward if I was too silent or too still for too long, was nowhere to be seen. She would not discourage any emotion I was feeling, regardless of what it did to her.
I wondered why she was bothering; I was fading away and it must have been obvious to everyone around us, not least of her all her. One day she would go up to the attic, book in hand, and I would simply be gone. Too lost inside my own mine, too far away to be reached.
But then, I reasoned, I imagined our situation reversed and knew I could never conceive of giving up on her. I'd have done whatever it took to keep her there with me, no matter how much it hurt us both.
It had been fifty eight days after I had left Forks, time was becoming cryptic and obscure. Minutes blurred into hours, melted into days. I lost all ability to track it with any sense of accuracy. I lost many abilities, most of them sensory. I found myself reduced to something resembling a human state. Limited to basic sight, sound and sensation. Time had really been the last thing to go; I had always been able to keep impeccable track of the moments that passed, often because it was a refined form of torture. But now, I was detached to a damaging degree. Now I had to see a clock to know what time of day it was. I relied upon others to tell me which day of the week it was, if I had cared to ask.
The world, it seemed, was fading away.
Or perhaps not; perhaps, instead, I was the one fading away.
Carlisle thought it was a defence technique, brought about by the shock of it all. He thought I was numbing myself from the pain, distancing myself from the guilt. In truth, I was locking myself away with it. Outside of that blurring existence, where only agony and loathing kept me company, there might have been hope. Outside of that, there was help ready and waiting. Only it was slipping away.
Or, again, I was slipping away.
I couldn't explain it. Surely I had been in worse pain than this; to even think of what Rosalie had inflicted upon me, and worse, what I had inflicted upon her was to shudder in horror. And yet, I had never lost roots in reality. I had never felt this. The reasons behind it were too much to even contemplate.
Whatever it was, it was winning. Heartbreak and utter desolation the likes of which I had never experienced...I had no comparison for it. A grey, sickly cloud of darkness and despair crushing the unnatural life from within me. It would eventually reign triumphant over me; I could feel as much.
The only thing that had prevented it thus far, was Rosalie. Her stubborn insistences and anger grounded me, gave me hope. Her determination was unshakable. It was painfully obvious that she would die before allowing me to fall into what was devouring me, piece by piece.
One little part of me at a time, eaten and gone forever and a sly, quiet whisper; 'Where is your redemption now, monster?'
"Edward," a voice was calling. It sounded far away; an echo. "Edward!"
"Hmm?" I managed, still trying to pull myself out of the foggy recesses of my torturous mind. The greyness reluctantly released a small amount of attention and I realised I was in the bathroom.
"Edward, there's water coming under the door. Are you alright?"
It was Emmett's voice, calling to me. It took a full minute for me to process his words and drag myself back into reality. Slowly, dazed, I looked down. The bath was overflowing. The floor was covered in water, pushing itself under the small gap underneath the locked door.
"Oh," I said. "Sorry."
"Can I...?" he hesitated. "Can I come in?"
I looked down at myself to check if I was still dressed. "Yes."
The door opened cautiously and then he came in, heading straight for the bath. He turned off the faucets and pulled the plug. I heard water sloshing around his shoes and, for the first time, felt it around my bare toes. Noisily, the water began to drain away; untouched and clean, never having fulfilled it's purpose.
I looked up at my brother and felt a vague, distant pang of sympathy for him. Though he didn't exactly have Rosalie's method of making me feel like I was still really here, he was the most bearable of all the others. He was dressed beautifully, I realised. Armani suit, loose collared shirt and very expensive shoes. A hand to his eyes and sighed a deep, shuddering sigh.
"I'm sorry," he said, breathing oddly. "We shouldn't have...we should have been here."
"You look nice," I said, marvelling at how detached I sounded, and felt. "What's the occasion?"
He shook his head, removing the hand so I could see his eyes. "Nothing," he dismissed, shaking water off his sleeve. "Nothing important."
"Your anniversary," I realised, having heard it in his mind. "Of course. I forgot."
"We shouldn't have gone," he muttered to himself. "Should have listened to her."
So that's where Rosalie had been. In hindsight, someone had told me this but it hadn't sunk in. I'd heard that she was going out, that was all that really mattered. A prickle of fresh guilt rolled over me, but it barely even registered compared to the rest.
Emmett sat on the edge of the bath, surveying me with worried eyes. I looked away, hating that expression in the eyes of those I loved. I longed for the safety of the attic, but it would just worry him even more if I suddenly bolted out of the room.
"Edward," he sighed and I steeled myself for whatever was coming. This was his rarely heard 'Adult Voice'. "I can't even begin to express how worried we all are about you."
I pulled the shutters at the forefront of my mind, locking myself away from his words. Words that would make everything so much worse. Words I couldn't hear. Words that would make me even more of a stranger to him than I already was. Maybe he saw it in my eyes, because he reached out to me, gently prodding my shoulder. I could see his lips moving now, vaguely make out his shape and colour, but it was largely silent except for a rushing noise in my ears.
Then he looked up sharply, attention pulled elsewhere and he stood. He left my peripheral vision, but I didn't trust myself enough to lower the shutters; he was probably talking to Carlisle or someone about how worried he was; about how I was slipping away.
Things were blurring around the edges, losing focus. I wasn't controlling it now; it was happening of it's own accord. It might have continued until nothing remained, but there was a sudden pressure on my arm and then what little remained of the world tilted at a funny angle. I was being yanked up to a standing position. Hands pulled my chin up and my blurred eyes were filled with light.
Rosalie.
The relief would have been embarrassing if I'd had the energy to care. Almost immediately, focus began to form and sound began to return; the deep rushing noises fading into nothingness. Her voice was coming in speaking harsh, short sentences.
She was painfully beautiful; dressed in black to match Emmett. I barely had time to take in what she was wearing before her words reached my mind.
"...stupid, dim witted moron," she was saying. "Literally can't even run a bath."
"Rose," Emmett pleaded. "Don't be angry, please..."
"Bad enough the mess he makes with towels, and now he's trying to flood the place? No, Emmett. It's not alright at all. Why was no-one with him? God knows if he's going to keep acting like a child, he's going to need supervision."
Look at her...making me feel stupid, childish, ashamed. All emotions that had roots in this reality. Each painful word strengthening the ties I had to this plane; each admonishment steadying me a little more. No-one knew me like Rosalie.
"Well, come on then!" she snapped at me, thrusting something into my hands. A towel. "You can help clean it up. I suppose you'll enjoy it, as it involved soaking wet towels on the floor."
"Rosalie, maybe this isn't..."
"I swear he's got a vendetta against this floor."
"Rosalie..."
"Will you shut up and get more towels?"
Emmett left with an exasperated sigh and I dropped to my knees to help her clean the sodden floor. I noticed that her dress, doubtlessly expensive, was getting soaked in the process. Her curls were starting to fall out and her shoes were more or less ruined. She met my eyes with no hesitation whatsoever.
"You are not a child, Edward. You know as well as I do how to run a Goddamned bath, so stop acting so...retarded!" She lifted a sopping wet towel over the bath and rung it out; the water crashed heavily into the now empty bath, trickling away down the drain. "You shouldn't have come downstairs without me," she added, much more quietly.
'I shouldn't have left,' she thought. 'I won't leave you again.'
I watched the water invade the dryness of the towel beneath me and said, "It was your anniversary. You deserve to be happy."
"Oh just shut up and mop the floor," she snapped, but I could detect no genuine anger or nastiness in her mind. Only determination to keep me there with her. "Genius level IQ, photographic memory and you can't even run a bath!"
"I lost track," I told her, as defensively as possible. Building up the energy to be seriously offended was almost impossible, but her involvement and effort warranted an attempt, surely.
"Well keep track then! It's not rocket science, is it?"
Now it was obvious that beneath the exterior, she felt nothing of what she was saying. Not really. But she seemed to know what was required to keep me grounded and I wasn't about to question her methods; not when they were the only things keeping me remotely sane.
We mopped the floor in silence for a few more minutes until Emmett came back with more towels. He dropped them on the floor and then knelt down to help.
"Esme was...uh, not pleased about me using her towels," he said, half jokingly.
If he had encountered Esme that meant I had only seconds before...
"Oh, Edward!" Her lovely voice sounded surprised, as if she had not expected it to be me in the bathroom mopping the floor. A brief scan of her mind told me that Emmett hadn't told her exactly who had made the mess and she had assumed, not without credibility, that Rosalie and Emmett had created the flood in a fit of anniversary bath-time passion. It was almost...almost...funny.
"It's OK, Mom," Emmett said, throwing yet another sopping wet towel into the bathtub. "Just a little accident."
"You didn't say it was..." Esme trailed off, obviously unsure of how to finish that. "Well, you didn't say what exactly had happened."
"Like I said, just a accident."
"Yes, well that's fine. Make sure to put the towels straight in the washer after you're done." There was a very pregnant pause as the three of us diligently removed all traces of water from the pristine marble floor. Esme was still behind us, deliberating over something. "Edward," she said, finally deciding upon the best course of action. "You don't have to clean that up, honey. Why don't you come with me and we can-?"
"-No." Rosalie's rebuff was unusually short. I struggled to recall her ever speaking to Esme in such a manner. "It's his mess. He has to clean it up."
I looked up from the floor, over to Rosalie. Tight lipped, stern faced and practically translucent with determination. I extended the reach of gift as far as it would go, until I was bordering something not unlike Jasper's ability. It was like stretching out an arm, trying to physically grow your fingertips just to reach the object of your desire. Reaching into her mind in such a way probably constituted a violation of some sort, but the energy to care was long gone. Focusing it in such a way, I could almost feel her. I wanted, very badly, to feel her.
'Stop it, Edward,' she chided me, mopping even harder. I sensed, but could not quite feel her determination to keep me moving, involved, engaged. The isolation remained, I was trapped by it. Caught in a cage of numbness and anaesthesia; if only I could feel something, other than my own hellish torments.
After a few more glorious moments of seeing so far into her mind I could have stumbled into it, I reluctantly pulled away. I returned to my own mind; cold and desolate, filled with twisted ghosts and vicious guilt. Missed opportunities eating away at me, like acid through metal. Moments left untouched, untaken; times I could have held Bella more, kissed her more, loved her more. And that, of course, was only the surface of things.
"...even hear me? Edward! You can stop now, man. The floor's all dry. See?"
Emmett's hand on mine reached my brain before his voice did. I shook myself and realised he was right; I was scrubbing dry floor with a wet towel. Rosalie sighed and snatched the dripping cloth from my loose fingers, flinging it into the bathtub.
"Sorry," I said; a selected phrase from the autopilot section of my mind. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah," Rosalie said, nodding. She seemed to be seeing through the bathtub now; seeing a place that certainly wasn't our bathroom. Her glare was magnificent; I found myself drawn to it, wishing I was the focal point of it's brilliance and sheer violence. Maybe it would have penetrated the thick, foggy exterior that kept me disconnected from almost everything nowadays. "Sorry."
"Babe, maybe we should uh...y'know," Emmett unsubtly hinted. Rosalie didn't look away from where she was staring, nostrils flaring a little as she breathed in and out. Furious certainly suited her.
"No," she said after a minute. "He doesn't need to hunt."
"How do you do that?" I asked on a whim. "You always know what the other is thinking."
"Anyone gifted with eyesight would see that you're about five minutes away from collapsing with starvation, plus Emmett is unsubtle to an embarrassing degree. I think you're lending romance to a rather unromantic set of events," was her stone cold answer.
"Hey!" Emmett yelped indignantly. "I am not deeply unsubtle!"
She rolled her eyes and the trance seemed broken. "Oh please."
"Name one time when I've been unsubtle," he insisted, pushing up on his knees to match her, as she drew herself to full height.
A tiny smile cracked at the corners of her mouth. "The first time you proposed."
"That was...what? You knew about that?"
"You kept making hints about it being this 'really special night' that I'd 'never, ever forget'. What did you expect?"
Their banter faded away a little as a memory began to push itself to the forefront of my mind. Something was most definitely relevant there, had my mind been clearer I could reach it...
Ah yes.
The night Emmett proposed.
"He's going to propose, you know."
She stopped, mid motion and looked at me in the mirror. "Yes," she said finally, laying the hairbrush down on the desk. "I know."
I was restless, pacing behind her. "And?"
She glared at me in the mirror. "And what?"
"Are you going to say yes?"
I saw her swallow once, before answering. "Of course."
The pain hit me right in the chest, straight in the lungs. I knew I'd gasped, because I saw her flinch a little in the mirror before she shook it off.
"What did you expect, Edward?"
When I opened my eyes, things were a little clearer than before. I could feel that my knees were wet, my toes were bare against the tiles and that my hair was thick with dust and dirt. The air tasted strange, foreign even. Rain was coming a few miles away. There were mice somewhere, maybe beneath the foundations of the house. Emmett's cologne was the one I had given him as a gift twelve years ago. Rosalie's hair had gotten wet with rain at some point in the evening; they had been outside. It was evening, ten thirty nine if I adjusted the time zone. We were near water, a lake.
I gasped, slightly shocked at the sudden inundation of data and sensation. I looked down at my hands, still moist with bath water, and found I couldn't stop staring at them. They were fascinating, as though I'd never seen them before.
The pain of that memory still burned in my chest; a bitter, sharp taste in the back of my throat. It was a wholly different pain to the incessant ache I was growing almost accustomed to.
And then it began to fade away again. The world blurred around the edges, things went back to being quieter and less colourful. Vivid details made themselves hidden once more and that familiar glass wall that detached me from the world came sliding down once again.
What had happened?
The sudden energy I had felt was gone instantly. Had I dreamed the whole incident? I had suffered from day hallucinations before this, so it would be setting no precedent if I had. But still, I couldn't be losing my mind that quickly, could I?
Confused, I stood up. The full weight of Rosalie's sudden attention hit me hard, disorientating my muddled brain.
'Something's different, something just changed. Is he OK? Oh God, please, please don't take him from me. I just need more time, I need a little more time to figure out what will bring him back. He looks the same, but damnit something was different, I swear it!'
"Are you still with us?" she asked tightly; an interesting contradiction between the internal and external. She and Emmett had been standing close together, playfully bantering. Emmett turned and gave me a quick up and down.
"Yeah, you look kinda...well...dizzier."
"I should go upstairs," I managed to get out, feeling off balance to a degree that was worrying. "It's too...I need to go upstairs."
"Sure, I'll help you," Emmett offered instantly, reaching out to help me as if I were an elderly, injured man.
"No," Rosalie forbade, suddenly.
Emmett threw a confused look at his wife, frowning. "What?"
"He should have a bath. I'll supervise him while he's running it."
Emmett made a rare sound of disgust. "Goddamn it, Rosalie! You're not his Mother!"
Her mouth thinned with grim determination. "If he goes upstairs now it'll take days for him to come back down again and he needs a bath! Put him down and leave."
Even I, distant and detached as I was, winced at that.
"Excuse me?" Emmett asked, slowly.
She squared up, not the least bit intimidated. "I'm pretty sure I said put him down," which was the first time I realised Emmett was half holding me up. "And leave. What part of that was too subtle for you?"
Man and wife glared at one another for a few heated, dangerous moments before I landed on the side of the bath with an audible 'plonk!' and Emmett stormed off.
When he was gone, Rosalie shut the door and sighed. Without a word, she went to the bath and began wringing out the remaining towels. I watched her silently as she twisted the material so hard it groaned. When they were nothing but damp, she put the plug back in the bath and began to run the water. She sat beside me on the side of the tub, not touching me at all. But still close.
"Happy anniversary?" I offered weakly.
She snorted, tossing her hair a little. Such a familiar gesture, though it was an echo of it's former glory now. "I'll make it up to him next year. He'll understand. He always does."
Part of me knew I should warn her not to take his kindness and understanding for granted; but again, lacking energy prevented me from doing so.
"You look nice," I said after another bout of quietness.
"I look," she said, but not without a trace of dry humour. "Like a drowned rat."
"But the prettiest drowned rat of them all."
Her tiny little laugh made the effort of that comment all worth it. The water behind was soothing; maybe that was how I'd let it spill over before. The sounds were soothing, a little too soothing. All rushing softness and the promise of silence once submerged.
"Hey," she said, not a little sharply, her eyes suddenly locked onto mine. "Stay here. You got that? Stay here."
I let my head drop down a little, it felt so heavy. "What's the point?" I mumbled. "Stay and do what? Listen to how guilty I'm making everyone feel? See how I'm destroying the lives of my family now? Why should I stay, Rosalie? Please tell me."
"I will not even dignify that with a response," she stated in a tone that brokered no room for argument. "When you've finished your Leonard Cohen tribute act, then I'll answer that question; when it's rephrased."
I chuckled. "Leonard Cohen?"
"Oh didn't you hear? He killed himself listening to you."
"I seem to have that effect on people."
She made an expressive sound, quite revolted. "Good God, Edward get a grip just a tiny little bit, will you? No-one has killed themselves over you, quite yet. Bella - yes I'm saying her name, stop flinching! Bella hasn't killed herself. She's probably in her room, listening to some sappy, tragic love song on repeat."
It took a massive concentration of all my efforts not to shut out what she'd said from the moment she mentioned Bella's name. Now that I'd heard it, the unnamed fear was in the back of my throat, about to whistle past my lips.
"What if she does?" I almost choked. "I can't even...what if...?"
"Stop it," she instructed, sternly. "You're making things a thousand times worse. Just stop torturing yourself. Please."
"Little bit late for that, no?"
She exhaled through her teeth. "I'm not saying things aren't bad. They are. But for Christ's sake, Edward; you don't have to make it worse. I can barely cope with this, please don't add some fresh hell to it."
I wanted to thank her. I wanted to say how sorry I was. I wanted to be able to say it and have the words come out right. I couldn't.
"Are you going to stay and watch me in the bath?" I settled on, aware of the awful timing in attempting levity.
She threw my a wry look, genuine emotion buried behind it. "Are you going to be able to run it without flooding the house?"
"Was that a question of ability or inclination?"
"Edward," she sighed. "Please be serious."
"It was a joke, Rosalie. Yes, I can run a bath."
Her mind, so close to my own, was so soothing. She and she alone had perfected a method of controlling her voice within her mind; the mental equivalent of whispering or humming. I took solace where I could and let my mind be swayed and hushed by hers until I was unknowingly leaning into her.
I only realised this when she reached behind me and turned off the faucet. The bath was run now; she would leave.
A pause as she considered whether it was actually safe to leave me alone. She decided to give me some credit. "I'll be back in half an hour."
"I'm hardly going to drown," I pointed out, without energy. Leaning into her had felt wonderful. Physically, mentally; wonderful in every way possible. Without it, I felt bereft and even worse than before.
"Half an hour," she reminded me, rising without so much as another glance in my general direction. The door closed behind her and she was gone.
I was alone.
Again.
Hardly an unexpected prospect, really, considering my actions.
I stripped of what little remained of my clothes, letting them fall in a messy heap, and then climbed gracefully into the deep, beautiful bath. The grace of my movements was not conscious; something innate and ingrained upon me. The poise and carriage of felines; predators. Fluid and silent by nature, lest our prey detect our approach. It served as a wonderful reminder of why I was destined to be alone. Why I should be alone.
Monster. I was a monster.
Carlisle could call us immortals all he wanted; the truth was glaringly obvious. We were monsters. Vampires. We killed, drank blood, murdered and clawed into flesh to feed. Monsters did not deserve happiness, and most certainly not at the cost of innocence.
Though she had been my redemption, my chance for all goodness and light...it could not come at the risk of her life.
So I would be alone. As all demons were destined to be.
Alone.
The word was loud, stabbing. It sliced through me with the strength born of genuine hatred. It's resonance was the uneven screech of nails down a chalkboard, destroying any calm. Any chance of peace.
The water was scalding hot; a human would have been in agony, but to my cold, dead body it was pleasantly warm. I sank deeper and deeper until my ears brushed the surface. I exhaled my last breath and then sank totally beneath. The water became a cocoon; a velvety shroud, wrapping me up and hiding me away from the world just outside the small space. Thick and heavy, I relished the comfort of the water. Strange, that something as simple as a bath had become such a means of relief.
I felt a little less alone once fully submerged. I forcefully exhaled the last small remnants of oxygen from my body and allowed gravity it's claim over me as I sank and remained at the very bottom of the deep tub.
But a few minutes later, the silence I had grown so accustomed to...the silence I had come to rely on, was breached.
At first I dismissed it. Shutting my mind off took a little while and I chalked it up to lack of concentration. I focused hard on the blackness that would soon surround me, and waited for it to settle in.
Only it didn't.
I heard voices. Thoughts. Memories. Not all my own.
Bella's soft snoring, the way she would subconsciously sweep her hair behind her ears. Her sleepy smile upon waking and seeing me there.
Monster. Watching her sleep. Vile, repulsive monster.
"Is that what you dream about? Being a monster?"
"Mostly I dream about being with your forever."
"Bella, I will stay with you – isn't that enough?"
I will stay.
Stay.
I hadn't stayed. I had gone, left her alone. I hadn't been able to get away from the forest fast enough before I'd heard her hit the ground. The gasps that emanated from her delicate little throat. Her heart going wild, unsteady. I had left her all alone, broken her heart.
Broken mine.
"Don't leave me."
"I won't."
Liar. Despicable, evil liar. Unworthy.
It was loud in my head. Louder than it should have been. This had worked so many times before, why wouldn't it work now?
Memories on a loop flashed before my eyes; light in the darkness and I flinched away uselessly. Blood on my hands, I licked it away both loving and despising myself. Flesh under my fingernails, tiny fragments of bone on my boots. So many had died that I might drink and consume their blood. Watching that first person die...seeing the light leave their eyes, life obeying entropy. Nothing would redeem me. Nothing would save me.
And then there had been Bella. Maybe I was less of a monster, because she – a beautiful, innocent human – could love me. Each day with her was a day in the purest of light. Each moment with her had cleansed me, made me feel...decent.
'Where is your redemption now, monster?'
That whisper again, laughing and cruel. I knew where it was coming from, it was getting louder. Soon it would be a scream. Soon I would fade away, dissolved by pain and that thing within would take control.
But no, I would not allow that. I couldn't allow that. The water was my refuge. It was the only thing I had left, it had to help...I would make it.
I opened my mouth and sucked in the water.
It was deeply uncomfortable. The water flooded into my lungs, down my throat. The sensation turned painful, but not nearly enough to distract me from the cacophony within. Dangerously determined now, I pushed the water back out again and this time closed my mouth, but breathed in through my nose.
The effect was instantaneous. Water filled my nasal cavity, flowing slowly but steadily into my cranium. Vaguely I wondered, as the water filled my skull, if I could actually die like this. What if the water doused the synapses sufficiently that they wouldn't fire? Maybe this was the answer to my problem. Silence at last.
It seemed amusing, right up until everything ceased to be.
The evolution of change is much like evolution itself. Mostly it is gradual, unseen alterations. The constant axis of the planet's invisible rotations. Slow, unnoticeable growth or plants and trees. Oceans rising, populations growing, temperatures changing little by little. But every now and then, something unexpected will happen and that slow, paced evolution takes a leap. Sometimes amazing discoveries are made in the name of science, altering the way we perceive ourselves and the universe. Sometimes it is an aberrant alteration within a species of animal. Sudden change takes hold and all the world stops and stares as new laws are written and the previous ones fall obsolete.
Change can happen at anytime, for any reason. Usually when one least expects it to.
One and a half thousand years ago, a new humanoid species began to slowly, secretly emerge. The origins of this glittering, lethal breed remain unknown, but the evidence can be tracked to more or less around this time. There is no species in between these two; vampires and humans. No half measures. Simply two beings, sharing a joint ancestry but little else. This is a sparkling example of how evolution sometimes outdoes itself. Skipping a few hundred, maybe even thousand years worth of gradual alteration in favour of the new, dangerous version.
Vampires are mercurial beings, at a cellular level. Indeed, their bodies are diamond hard and indestructible. Yet, to one another, they are soft. They don't age, and yet they learn and change, endlessly. Their emotional control is often greater than humans, but they feel so much more. They are connected to all things dark, each and every one of them in possession of a gift of some sort. Sometimes these gifts lay dormant within; the full potential of the ability having never been discovered. The laws of these things are tricky to pin down; mercurial is an apt description indeed. The overt abilities, i.e. mind reading, mind control, divination, healing, light bending etc, are usually obvious from the inception. A mind reader knows he is a mind reader, because he can hear thoughts.
Some of these dazzling killers appear less gifted; mundane even, by comparison. Yet it is a relatively unknown truth that within them lies a gift; untapped, unused. Perhaps there is no necessity for it, but it exists nonetheless.
And still change can come about when it is least expected. Life, eternal or otherwise, if made up of a few key moments that change everything.
A dormant, redundant ability is all well and good...unless, of course, it would be very badly needed.
The evolution of change is made of shock, desperation and fear. We push our capabilities further than imaginable, for these reasons. Change is an unstoppable force and just as destructive. We are never ready, never able to see it coming.
A dangerous road to walk for a human.
And even more so for a vampire.
For an immeasurable amount of time, there was nothing. Nothingness so complete, I wasn't even aware of it.
But then...
The world thundered and shook. The very foundations of the planet trembled and vibrated with the sheer energy of whatever was trying to erupt beneath it.
Hell, I supposed, was coming to get me.
Clearly, I had died in the bathtub. It seemed interesting, almost intriguing that such amazing creatures of duration and strength could be so easily undone and ultimately destroyed by something as basic as water.
The blackness was thick and heavy, but I was thinking...I was aware. I could feel. So death was not, as Alice remained convinced, simply the end of all things. It was not a lack of consciousness; eternal darkness and silence.
Though I was indeed surrounded by a shroud of silence and darkness, I was aware that I did, on some level, exist.
The thunderous boom shook me again. The world, beyond my vision, felt as though it was breaking apart. Something punching it's way through.
Yes, it was obvious. I had died and soon, I would be in hell with other soulless demons. It was no more than I deserved.
I waited, enduring the silence with a resignation akin to hopelessness when the next jarring earthquake hit me, only this time it was centred more in my solar plexus. My chest heaved and convulsed and a wrenching current of agony coursed through me.
Hell. Pain. Torment. Punishment.
What I deserved.
It happened again, only this time I saw light. A flash of white, gone in an instant but I had seen it nonetheless. What was happening? Now my chest felt heavy, broken somehow. Genuine pain registered with me; actual, physical pain.
And then, like a pin dropping, I heard the faintest of sounds. The minute noise grew louder, stronger. It grew deafening.
Hell was certainly not lacking in creativity.
The next blow seemed to shatter my ribs; crush my body to such a degree that I thought I might actually come apart. I saw light, only this time it didn't vanish. It threatened to fade, but then the next blow came swiftly and cracked bones, splintered them violently. The light remained, blurred swirls of white and grey that moved around me. Figures, perhaps. The pain sent my mind screaming and suddenly the urge to breath was horrifically powerful, made even worse when it was denied. My lungs did not work, they would never work again.
The final blow must have gone all the way through me. Punched a hole clean through my chest because the pain of it made me cry out and the moment I did that, I regurgitated a mass of water. The ringing sound stabilised and I could detect actual, individual sounds. The agony now residing within my broken body made me tremble, want to be sick.
I felt my fingertips twitch as I continued to cough and spit out water. It came in cold rivulets from my nose, out of my mouth and onto the floor. The floor...I felt the floor, ice cold against my cheek. Someone had turned me on my side. I was laying on the floor. Someone...that meant there were other people.
I wasn't dead.
Sound distilled itself, through my vision stubbornly refused to do so.
"...still inside him, he's not fully responsive!"
"Given time, it should trickle out of his ears."
"Should? Should is not good enough!"
"Rosalie, calm down. He'll be fine."
"All my fault, shouldn't have left him. What's wrong with me?"
The words were distant and echoing; I could vaguely tell who was speaking. My father, Carlisle. I loved my father. So kind, so understanding...
And Rosalie. Rosalie...
The very name lit a spark of something in my brain. I opened my eyes, seeing the outline of the bathtub I had tried to drown in. Rosalie, Rosalie, Rosalie...
My brain exploded.
It must have quite literally exploded. Nothing else could account for the sudden lethal pain within my skull. I coughed, afraid I would actually vomit from the sheer intensity of it. My spine curled in on itself and I hunched myself together, retching and clutching at my head. I couldn't even scream, it took my breath away completely.
"Oh God, Edward. Just breathe slowly, nice and slowly. It'll pass, you'll see."
Carlisle's loving lies did not bring an end to the raging, atomic agony within my head. It shredded at my nerves, chewed on each and every filament of my being and screamed in delight as it tore me to pieces.
"It's not working, get Jasper here right now! Call him, he's the only one who can help. Carlisle, please. Please, just call him."
"She's right." Emmett's voice was barely distinguishable over the torture within. "But Christ, Rose; Jasper's a while away. Look at him! He's not gonna make it!"
Irony once again. I had been rescued from the brink of a peaceful, quiet death only to die in screaming, violent agony.
I tore at my hair, trying to pull my skull apart to release whatever pressure was within. I would rip myself to pieces if only it could stop this. Something was happening to me here, something I'd never felt except during those three days I had become what I was now. I had never thought anything could possibly match that, but apparently I had been wrong.
I'm dying, I thought. I'm going to die, right here on this floor.
For all my depression and melancholia, I was suddenly terrified. I didn't want to die, I didn't want to simply fade away and be forgotten. The fear made me retch again, and my head exploded some more sending shockwaves of fresh, white hot agony through my entire body.
Dying, dying, dying, dying...it was ridiculous...I was dying.
And then...just as there was enough air to start screaming, something cool and soft slipped into my mind. Like a gloved hand, reaching into a fire. I could feel it, I focused hard upon it. It was the most beautiful shade of gold I had ever seen in my existence. A swirling strand of something pure and lovely; everything it touched within my mind, began to calm itself.
'Edward,' it whispered. 'Stay. Stay. I'll help you.'
The agony in my head began to subside, but after a few moments of lessened pain, whatever it was causing it latched onto the fact that something was helping me. The throbbing intensified massively, unbearably and my nervous system threatened to shut down entirely. Though anything would have been preferable to this, I was still frightened of dying. I did not want to die, I wasn't ready.
Another sliver of gold appeared now, shaped almost like an arm. There were two, reaching and touching those parts of me that demanded self destruction. It was like a chemical fire being doused with ice water.
'I'm right here, inside you. I'll make it stop, you'll see.'
I knew the voice. I knew the hands. I knew the colour. Though I didn't dare take my hands from my head, nor open my eyes, I knew very well who it was.
After an inestimable amount of time, the pain subsided enough that some of my muscles began to relax. My body became susceptible to sensation once more. I felt a hand on my face, one on my shoulder. I felt the cold air all around me, I felt the damp towel someone had draped over me.
Maybe it had been hours, days even, but the pain was leaving. My mind, ragged and raw, was no longer self destructing.
And those gold threads, they didn't pull back straight away. Didn't pull away, not even when the very last drop of pain was soothed away. Not even when Rosalie's hands left my skin, did they withdraw from my mind. I felt (and that should have been my first warning) that she didn't trust me enough to fully leave me alone just yet.
I felt that she couldn't take much more of this. I felt, not heard, that her own heart was breaking, broken, for me. I felt how terrified she had been, upon kicking the door down and seeing me lying there in the bottom of the bathtub, unmoving and still. I saw and felt her terror as she pulled me out, slapping me hard to wake me up. I felt her break when I refused to react. I saw her slamming her fist down onto my chest to make me cough up the water. I felt her frustration and despair each and every time she did this and nothing happened. I felt her blinding relief when I had finally coughed up half the bathtub, taking a screaming, gurgling breath.
The pain was almost gone now, but something was different. My mind was moving slowly, but functioning adequately enough to know that this was not normal. Something had changed. Those two golden threads merged into one and for the time begin, simply sat inside my mind; tired, drained of their energy.
"Edward," Emmett was saying. "Can you hear us? Don't worry, Jasper's coming! He'll help you!"
"I think," Rosalie panted, surprisingly out of breath. "He's better now."
"What? How?"
"I don't know, but he's not twitching and clawing at his own skull anymore. Maybe it's receding."
The gold inside my mind made a very distinct, but beautifully quiet, 'Shhh,' sound. I felt that it was a secret. That was most definitely new. Alarmingly so, if I'd had a scrap of energy left to be actually alarmed.
Emmett sounded wrung out. "Christ, I hope so."
For the first time since becoming a vampire (and for the first time in our recorded existence) I felt extraordinarily tired. I felt as though I could actually have slept. I closed my eyes, body tingling and trembling all over. I breathed slow, shallow breaths. My lungs felt like jelly; crushed, useless lumps of tissue that failed to absorb the air. My ribs were undoubtedly broken, but they were already starting to knit together. I was partly amazed that my usually impervious, unbreakable body had been...well...broken. Testament to one of Carlisle's theories; we could be broken only by ones such as ourselves.
"We should move him," she said after a few moments. "Emmett, wrap him up in something and take him to our room."
I was about to protest that I didn't need to go to their room, because the impropriety of that was blindingly obvious, even to me. But of course, I realised in time to state my objection, I didn't have a room yet. The only place I had in this whole house that was remotely mine, was the dusty attic.
Feeling like a small, stupid child, I allowed Emmett to lift me up, wrap me in a large white towel and then physically pick me up and carry me, princess style, away from the bathroom which, in my opinion, had seen far too much for one day.
The journey there was strange and a few times I felt as though I was going to lose consciousness. A terrifying prospect indeed as I hadn't experienced anything remotely resembling such a state for well over eighty years now. I was afraid that if I lost consciousness, I might never wake up again. Once I tried to regain some fractional amount of dignity, and demanded that Emmett set me down and allow me to walk. The moment he let me attempt to stand on my own two feet, I stumbled and crashed ungracefully to the floor. My legs felt like the bone had been transformed into lukewarm jelly; they refused flat out to cooperate in any way whatsoever. Emmett tapped his foot impatiently as I lay, sprawled over the cream carpet until I groaned inwardly and allowed him to pick me up again.
Though it could never be said that the house in Forks had been anything resembling small, this house was vastly larger. It reminded me of an old house we had lived in, many years ago. There weren't just rooms; there were wings. Whole areas of the house with their own little subsections of rooms. By no small amount of intention, Emmett and Rosalie's room was in the further room of the east wing. My journey there marked the first time I had been in this part of the house. I found myself somewhat impressed, in a rather distracted manner. Being carried by Emmett, like some wounded damsel, dampened my interest somewhat.
When we arrived, finally, at two large double doors at the end of a seemingly endless corridor, he kicked open the doors without breaking stride. I heard the wood splinter and crack around the hinges.
To my great surprise, there was a bed. Not just any bed, either. A very large, exotic four poster bed. Black wooden pillars, decorated by purple voile hangings. Plum, gold and burgundy silk sheets and duvets covered the large emperor sized mattress. I was about to enquire as to it's existence in their room, when I was unceremoniously dropped on top of it.
"Hey!" I managed weakly, rearranging the towel so I had a little more dignity.
"Don't 'hey' me," Emmett said, tightly. He vanished through a door in the back corner of the room, returning a few seconds later with a t-shirt and trousers which were flung none too kindly at me.
I pulled the t-shirt on, wincing a little as I moved my head too fast. He glanced in my direction, frowning.
"You OK?"
"Fine, I just...it's a little like whiplash."
He crossed his arms over his chest and leant back against the wall, determinedly not impressed. When I was fully dressed, I folded the towel up neatly into a perfect rectangle and then placed it on the desk beside the mysterious bed. The desk was Rosalie's; she insisted on dragging it everywhere we went. I gave the room a once over, mildly amused at how obvious Rosalie's mood prevailed over her decorating ideas.
Whereas in Forks, she had opted for gentler colours; muted pastels and warm creams, here she had rather let her dark creativity run away with her. It was perhaps what one would expect from a person such as Rosalie; purple, black, gold. Fairy lights around a mirror, a few candles lit and scattered around. She'd bought herself a new piano; most of the candles resided near or on top of it. Pictures on the dark purple wall; all her favourites. Three Monet's, a rather obscure, unknown Dali and a John William Waterhouse. A stunning black Persian rug, upon which she had thrown a procession of clothes and not bothered to pick them up again. The desk she took everywhere sat in the corner, lonely and resigned to her sudden change of tastes. The door to the far end, across from the two massive bay windows, hidden almost completely by black velvet curtains, was as I suspected, a walk in wardrobe. I scanned the room for some evidence, other than his scent, that Emmett actually resided in her with her.
"Well?" he prompted, suddenly.
I blinked, it hurt to do so.
"Sorry?"
For the first time, I realised that he was furious.
"You tried to kill yourself. I'd like to know, if it's not too much trouble, what the hell you were thinking?" he growled.
I felt very suddenly like a stupid, attention seeking teenager. The exhaustion was wearing off to be replaced instantly with deep embarrassment and shame.
"I wasn't..." but the lie trailed off, unfinished. What was the point of lying? "I'm sorry."
He swallowed, it seemed very loud. "Don't you dare apologise," he half whispered. "Don't make this about us. This is about you, Edward. Rosalie was right. I should have listened, I just...I didn't think it was this bad. I knew you were upset, dealing with it the way you deal with everything. Badly. Overreacting, self indulgent angst and bullshit. I mean, if I'd known it was this bad...I would have been going up to sit with you in that damned attic all day and night!"
I stared at him, lost for words. He put his hands to his face, shoulders tight and heavy with tension and stress.
"I know you don't want to hear it, I know you're just going to shut off the minute I start talking about it but you're killing us too. I'm not saying it to guilt you out or whatever, but you're hurting us by hurting yourself. Maybe not Alice and Jasper so much because they're not here with us, in the thick of it. Jasper is hours away and Alice is doing her own thing elsewhere." He paused again, struggling to find the words. His mind was oddly quiet, stilted. "You're hurting the people who love you the most. Do you know what you mean to me?" He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "You're not just my friend, not just my brother. You've been there for me at times when I thought I could never face another day. You've seen me at my worst, pulled me back from losing my self." He grimaced, head inclining slightly to the left. "To see you do this to yourself...it hurts me more than I can say. And yeah, I know you don't want to hear about that but guess what? This? This kinda requires you to listen and hear what I'm saying! I don't care how much you love Bella or how much it hurts! This is beneath you! Nothing in the world gives you the right to do this, not to yourself and not to us."
I closed my eyes, a nasty cold spike of guilt wedging it's way into my spine.
"I just wanted silence, just for a little while."
"At what cost?" he snapped, pushing away from the wall. "Look around you, Edward! You are surrounded by people who love you and you – you who sees and hears everything – can only see who isn't surrounding you. So you left Bella, doing the right thing by the way! So she's not around anymore, that doesn't mean you just get to throw everything away! You've been through worse and you'll go through worse again but that never gives you the right to do...this!"
"I'm sorry."
"You're sorry for all the wrong reasons," he went on, as if unable to stop now that he had started. "Do you know why we have a bed in here? Did it escape your attention? Huh?"
"No," I mumbled, instantly seeing where this was going and hating myself just a little more.
"I made Rosalie buy one a few weeks ago. You know why? So I could hold her while she cried. Every time she'd come down from that goddamned attic, she'd be just about ready to fall apart. And I..." he choked a little, breaking off and catching his breath. "I had nowhere to lay with her while she cried. I made her buy it so I could hold her together while she fell apart with the effort of holding you together! Oh she'll lie and make some smart ass remark about sex or something, but that's what it's for. Because she can't stand upright after seeing you like this!"
I desperately wanted to tell him to stop, but I didn't. She'd always seemed so calm and composed, sitting there with me in the darkness. My anchor to steady places. And I'd never known how much it was hurting her, not really. She was too good at controlling her mind and my gift was not Jasper's gift – I couldn't feel her.
"You're destroying more than yourself."
And I could see that he was right. Even being clinical and logical about the entire thing, it made sense that Rosalie would be dragged down with me. How could two such as us, two being so hopelessly tangled and connected, ever hope to be in different places? If I was drowning, she was drowning too.
"I didn't think of that," I whispered, eyes fixed upon the silk threads of the duvet.
"Yeah, well that was pretty damned obvious!"
"Hey! What is going on here?"
We both looked up at the same moment to see Rosalie standing in the entrance to the room. She was glancing back and forth from Emmett and myself, suspiciously. When her gaze finally landed on Emmett, her eyes narrowed.
"Are you seriously doing this now?" she demanded.
"We were talking, Rose," he sighed. "It's not a crime."
"What were you talking about?"
"Brother stuff," he replied, vaguely.
And then something jarring happened, not for the first time that day.
Something was moving around inside my mind.
"Gah!" I yelped, and jumped as though electrocuted.
Emmett started forward, concern written all over him. "What is it? What's wrong?"
The moving, curling thing did not cease. It was very gently searching for something. The golden thread, I realised, was trying to seek out knowledge of what had passed between Emmett and I.
Rosalie. Was. Reading. My. Mind.
I gaped openly at her, slack jawed and wide eyed. She continued to stare intently at me as the luminous thread rifled through my memories until it found what it had been searching for. Then her interest dissipated and she relaxed.
'Stop gawking,' she intoned softly.
"I'm...it's a...nothing. I'm fine," I lied, somewhat breathlessly. "My senses are returning, that's all."
'That's good. Now tell him you want to go hunting tomorrow.'
Experimentally, somewhat terrified about what it would mean if it worked...I allowed my mind to form speech of it's own.
'Are you reading my mind?'
Not the smartest question, admittedly, but an important one.
"He should definitely hunt tomorrow, don't you think, darling?" she asked Emmett and at the same time I heard her inside my mind.
'Do I really have to dignify that with an answer?'
"I guess," Emmett said, eyeing me uncertainly. "If he can walk, that is."
"You can always carry him," she suggested with a small smile.
"It begins," I muttered grimly.
"And shall never end from this moment on," Emmett promised, looking a little more like his old self. Some of the anger had left, replaced with sympathy and relief that I would live to be teased.
"Carlisle is making calls to every coven he can think of, asking about potential brain damage," Rosalie told Emmett. "Can you please go and convince him that the idiot is actually alright? He'll believe you."
"Like he won't believe you?" Emmett questioned, doubtfully.
"He doesn't believe I have Edward's best interests at heart," she explained with a casual shrug, highly indicative of some argument that had taken place between the two of them.
"That," Emmett stated loud and furious. "Is the stupidest thing I've heard all day, including anything that moron has come out with!"
"Thanks," I muttered, resigned to my fate.
Rosalie shrugged, exquisite and elegant, despite the horror she had endured. "He's probably right, to some extent. The last thing we need is other covens poking around in our business, looking a little closer at recent events."
"No goddamned excuse to say that!"
"Regardless, will you please go and talk to him? He's a little more in shock than he seems. Please?"
Her husband melted at the word. "Of course, baby. Whatever you want."
She smiled, genuinely and pulled him in to a brief, yet somehow lingering kiss as he went to leave. "I love you," she whispered.
His nose brushed hers and his eyes fell closed for just a moment. "Nowhere near as much as I love you," he breathed.
I had to swallow down a cry, because I could feel her love for him. It was new, terrifying and alien. An emotion that was not wholly my own, imprinting itself into my nervous system. Love, adoration, gratitude, safety...they were not my feelings, most certainly not.
And yet from Emmett, nothing but the shape and voice of his thoughts. He left, giving me a small smile and I had to exert serious control over myself not to scream the moment he left, demanding to know what was happening.
"I don't know what's happening," she answered softly, a few moments later. She backed up until her back hit a wall and I watched as she slid down it, until she was sitting on the floor. "I can't explain how or why."
"But you...you..." I spluttered.
She shook her head; her loose, limp curls moved a little. "I haven't done this, Edward. I don't even know what it is."
"I think it's pretty clear," I gasped, feeling the thread settle down once more inside my mind. "You're in my head. I can feel you, see you." I swallowed, trying to find the courage to voice the worst of it. "And that's not all, is it? You...you can read my mind, can't you?"
A very small part of me had been able to rationalise this entire scenario up until then. Brain damage, temporary insanity etc. There was no limit to potential explanations that would shed light upon why I was imagining such things.
That small, desperately hopeful part exploded when she nodded, capturing my eyes with her own.
"How?" I gasped, feeling suddenly naked and open.
"Like I said," she went on, tiredly. "I don't know. All I know is, you came back from wherever you went and then you were," she lost her voice for a moment and struggled to regain it. The pain and distress rolling off her in waves made me feel physically dizzy. "You were dying again. I could feel it, something was happening to you and if I hadn't done something, you would have never come back. I was trying to pull you back, screaming at you in my mind but you couldn't hear over the pain." She paused, frowning and lost in recollection. "And then...I don't know, exactly. I fell inside you. I saw inside, felt it tearing you apart and I knew I could help. So I did."
Silence followed her words, crashing around us both as the gravity of everything started to hit us.
"So that's it? You fell inside me?" I echoed, raw with incredulity.
"What do you want me to say? I wished upon a star and it came true? I don't know how it happened, I really don't."
She wasn't lying, that was the worst thing. Her mind was open and honest and very, very tangible in ways it had not been before. The glass walls between my mind and the minds of others were non existent between us now. There was no discernable boundary between our minds.
She was inside me and I was inside her and we were one and the same.
Oh God, it was like some monstrous prophecy coming to fruition. How many times had we felt it, thought it, swore it over and over in prayer against each other's lips?
One soul in two bodies, only now there was a breach. Less separation, less distinction.
"I can feel you," I said, voice hoarse and unfamiliar even to my ears. "I've never felt you, not like this. Is it the same for you? Can you...feel me?"
Something flared through her, something bitter and distressed. "Yes," she whispered. "I can feel you."
I studied her intently for a moment before posing another question. "And you're...fine with that?"
"The alternative, I suppose, is to go insane? Drown myself in a bathtub?"
It was both terrifyingly reassuring and foreign to feel that spike of anger.
"I didn't drown."
"No," she said, her eyes boring into me, through me. "I saved you. I pulled you out, smashed your chest to pulp, made you sick up buckets of water. I reached inside and stopped you from losing your mind and part of me stayed there. You can feel me? Well you can't feel yourself, and if you could – you'd run a mile. I think under the circumstances, I'm handling this pretty well considering I've been given front row tickets and a backstage pass to the Underground Circus of Hell!"
I closed my eyes and tried to steady myself.
"Can you...?" I paused, unable to believe I was going to ask it. "Can you make it stop hurting?"
A long, calculative pause.
"I can," she said, slowly.
"Will you?"
"I'll help you," she said carefully. "But I won't take it away completely."
It went unsaid that she could take it away completely. Before, she'd held the ability to do exactly the same, only via completely different methods. But she wouldn't do that, not unless I was quite literally dying. Again.
I was drained, weak and tired; my abilities and strengths would return soon enough, but for the time being I was content to go along with that. She would continue to moderate her acquiescence and I would be patient, accepting what she would give me and not asking for more.
We both knew it wouldn't last.
We both knew it never did.
We both knew the rules had changed.
And we both knew, with absolute certainty, that the direct result of tension and pressure, was yet another breaking point.
A/N – OK, you can hurl rocks at me now. I know, I have defiled much in this chapter. Mainly science. But still, it's been a long time coming and I'm thrilled to finally break into this arc. So, yes I'm sorry if I've once again had my wicked way with canon, only to dismiss it and never call it again. But I'm a Scorpio. Evil goes with the territory.
This was a lot shorter than other chapters, mainly because I felt that if I didn't get it up soon, I was going to lose my mind. Hands down the hardest chapter EVER to write and it's been rewritten a lot, which probably shows but seriously – I couldn't take anymore and you all have been so patient, so here it is, posted and very short.
The next chapter will be dealing with more angst, but also telepathic adjustments, Jasper getting involved in the madness, camping trips and the first indication of just how seriously evil I am, because you think Edward and Rose have been suffering? Nothing to what I'm about to make them do soon. I even feel kinda bad about it, but ah well.
I love you all, beautiful, amazing people.
Reviews are lifeblood and it's 5:37am here.
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Bex
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