Hi, here is another chapter, my note this time is intended to be short and sweet so i hope you enjoy this chapter, enjoy easter if i dont get a chance to post before that and that anyone reading this stays safe and well.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine just this chapter and the character that is Lena.
Please let me know what you think.
There In The Disappearing Light
Chapter 16-Identity
Lena goes on a travel spree to find herself and ends up getting more and more confused by the day. Eventually she realises there is one place and one person she has to see if she is to ever find her place in this world. This chapter might be short and is entirely in Lena's point of view.
In reality there wasn't much of a plan. All she had with her was her school bag but Lena had ran away before with less. It took her five minutes to buy a ticket for a fight and then before she knew it she was on a plane to England. She had no idea why England but she had chosen on random. She had grabbed what she had needed in duty free and had thrown away the white silk Ralph Lauren blouse that had blood on the sleeves and the hem and had changed into a new shirt. She had grabbed a jacket and phone charger and had then had promptly fallen asleep on the plane. She noted that the passport must be good quality for her to get through two customs checks and then that the Cullen's had not put a block on her credit card.
She had put them in danger, she had hurt them and ran away from them and yet they were still funding this little venture in the knowledge she might never come back.
She was in a hotel when this thought came to her and she vomited up the pretzels, the burger and a good portion of blood into the porcelain sink when this thought sunk in. She lay there shivering with the aftershocks of both the illness and the realisation of what the fact that she was here in another country and had no idea what she was going to do next, she had no idea of who she was or what she was.
The voice in the back of her head that she kept for the truly special occasions where she wanted to hate herself, told her exactly what she wanted to hear at that exact moment in time. The one word that she had been thinking on for longer than she realised, since she had sunk her teeth into the two people who were only doing their best to look after her not knowing what they had let into their house.
Actually the same could be said of the Cullen's, of…but no…she wasn't going to think about that. She wasn't going to think about them right now because she might utterly break down and then who knows the damage she might do in the meantime.
Monster her brain supplied to her helpfully, monster, that's what you are. A monster.
Lena closed her eyes and inhaled the cheep wood that made up the bathroom cabinets and then finally once she was sure she had feeling back in her legs she forced herself up and fell into the bed that was not as soft as the one she had left the following morning (time difference included) and she slept deeply but found that there was now a nightmare attached to the sleep that came with a blonde, nameless, faceless woman who was strong and silent and deadly and dripping with blood.
When she woke up the next morning it had gone beyond lunchtime, her phone was silent, her mind was silent and the birds were chirping. She staggered out of bed and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Lena came to the conclusion there and then that florescent lighting was really nobody's friend and that yes—she really did feel as sick as she felt. She crawled back into the shower and attempted to make herself look presentable and when hunger forced her outside into the busy streets of London she found that she was able to grab a coffee and something to eat and actually stomach the food. It wasn't blood, but she was able to eat it.
Once the food was in her she found she was pounding the pavement, she got clothes, toiletries, a suitcase, other necessities and she winced as she realised her credit card was still working even the ones that worked overseas. The Cullen's after two days of nothing from her were still trusting her with money and it hurt with every thrust of the card at the damn machine. She picked up a map and then when she was back at the hotel and tucked up in bed feeling tired but not hungry she pinned the map at the wall and then threw a pen at it.
When she woke up she realised she knew where she was going next.
She spent a week in London.
Nobody tried to contact her.
Her next stop was Paris where she spent four days in a city that was rammed with tourists, it was still the romantic city that Lena had always dreamed about but she realised that it was not the same travelling alone as it was travelling with other people. She saw mothers and daughters shopping or laughing together and she had to look away.
It ached. The nameless, faceless woman who would have been in her twenties now would have if she had survived—give or take Lena's advancing age—and she was not here. There was no doting dad to swing her around in his arms as she saw on the third day she was walking around the city.
She went to sleep in another hotel room and as she stared at the ceiling she thought that she still didn't know who she was or what that meant. She was Lena but the Lena she had known and had clung to and she believed that she was had gone. She had lost herself somewhere between that first cup of blood and finding out that she was a half vampire. She had no idea how to move forwards in this world where there was no set outcome. Even death, the most simplest of things that a person could always see in their future had been taken from hers.
When she thought of this she turned over in her sleep and banged her head against the pillow to banish the thoughts of the blonde haired girl who was dripping with blood in her dreams.
Monster, her brain supplied whenever she was thinking good thoughts, don't forget what you are. You're a monster.
And still she noticed her phone was silent. Even Embry wasn't calling her.
She felt like throwing her phone against the wall but resisted. After all iPhones were not cheap even if you did seem to still have access to an unlimited credit card.
She next went to Spain and then when that didn't help she flirted outside Europe to Mexico where she sat upon a white sandy beach in the shade and watched her skin shimmer in the sunlight. It was nothing compared to the miraculous sight that was Rosalie that time she had been caught in the window but Lena supposed it was the one good thing about her since she had found out what she was.
Some people paid to have healthy glowing skin that looked forever moisturized.
She liked Mexico a little. The voice in her head quietened down when she looked in the mirror. She was sleeping better and the heat was so strong sometimes it made her miss the cold of Vancouver, the fact that there was snow starting in November thick on the ground sometimes and the rain lashing against the window.
She didn't even give a thought to the lack of contact that she still not getting. Perhaps Carlisle had told the rest of the family to keep their distance. How he could think to get Rosalie to do that she didn't know.
She realised something else about Mexico as she slung her now battered school bag over her shoulder and walked throughout the town square of the small town she was in seeing the heat and bustle of the city.
It still hurt to think of Rosalie.
That was her first realisation that the more louder and hotter the city was the less her brain thought and when she moved on she went to hotter cities. She spent two memorable weeks in Israel taking in the sights and then a week in the Bahama's where the sea was so clear it was like looking in a mirror. She tried new foods and ate better than she probably had done in her entire life and still she did not find something, anything to fill the hole in her chest.
The whole thing was disconcerting. She was running away from something and yet had nothing to run too. And she was not sure even as a month and then a month and a half went by, if she was welcome back.
Lena saw changes in the mirror to her appearance, the shadows under her eyes were going because she was drinking animal blood whenever she found a wildlife population that she could snack upon. She was eating better, walking all the time and she was sleeping and drinking deep. She could see the pale skin shimmer all the time rather than the dull pale it had been before. Her hair was lighter the sun streaking it. She was changing a little. Not a lot, not a lot for someone doing as much traveling as she was. She was still as pale as moonlight with no hint of a tan but she thought as she stared in the mirror she was seeing some changes. It was a though that brought comfort to her immensely.
She was still in her hotel in the Bahama's looking down at the map when the idea came to her. It had been nearly six weeks since she had disappeared of the face of the earth…so to speak…and she found that as she was looking for the next place to run to that nothing seemed to appeal to her. She lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling fan taking in a breath and breathing in the stale air and the heat and smoke coming from the open window.
She was no closer to finding out who she was or where she had come from. The search for her records had took a dead turn because she couldn't access them without going through so much red tape even Lena knew it was likely to be sometime next century before she got to them.
And…and…and if she was being honest with herself she didn't want to know either. Now she could admit it. She didn't want to know about some blonde teenager who had died alone and scared and probably with no clue of what was happening to her. She didn't want to think of the family that might be out their grieving that daughter, granddaughter, that sister and friend.
She didn't want to see them even at a distance. And for all she knew her mother could have been just like her, a kid who had grown up in the system shunted around left to right until a boy who looked just like Edward or Jasper or Emmett, impossibly charming and beautiful in the extreme came along and turned her whole world upside down.
Eventually she decided on Australia, she only spent three days there, she decided she liked her beaches empty even if the lifeguards were hot. She acknowledged that none of them were Embry. She found his silence perhaps the worst of all. Still she couldn't think of Rosalie without wanting to smash something or cry. Or get blackout drunk or kill thirty people.
Or do all of those things.
She went back to her old roadmap and paused.
Mexico. Mexico was where she had felt most at ease. Mexico was where she was going to go back to.
She caught the next flight out.
Lena had taken to walking amongst the secluded beaches at night watching the big creamy moon reflect on the water. She was wearing a pair of sky blue shorts and an white t-shirt and she carried her shoes in her hand. She was aware she was being watched and she turned her head a little bit to the side to see out of the corner of her eye with her vision which was better than the average fighter pilot that she was being eyed up by a group of boys possibly between the ages of sixteen and fifteen. She smiled at them and in the way of teenage boys they dissolved into giggles and flirtatious looks. Lena left them to it.
She had never really had patience that came with the average teenager.
She was not your average teenager after all.
And she knew none of them were Embry, the fact that she was now openly acknowledging that he was something on her mind constant as the moon that was reflected in the silent dark water. She carried on walking and waiting in the dense undergrowth listening. The now, two month absence from the Cullen's had sharpened her instinct and she waiting until she was sure the animal that she could see the rough outline off was alone and then she leapt as gracefully as she could towards it not making a sound until she had finished her food. Lena supposed she was getting good at this. She was wearing a white t-shirt and only a little bit at the hem was splattered. Not nearly enough to cause alarm to anyone passing her by.
She turned and walked back along the now deserted coastline.
It was past two in the morning before she had made up her mind. There was one person she had to see, one person where she had to know if what she was…if what she had done was the end. If she knew that…then she knew what would probably be expected of her if she ever went back to Vancouver.
She led herself into the room and went to the bathroom flipping on the light and staring at herself in the mirror. She took a deep breath gritting her teeth and gripping the porcelain white of the sink and then for the first time in nearly two months she opened the mental channel that was her mind.
It took her ten minutes to get where she wanted, it had been a long time since she had used her gift and she had gotten used to the silence.
But she knew who she wanted to speak to right now.
She knew who she wanted right now.
Embry.
Embry.
"Embry" she said out loud staring at herself in the mirror.
There was silence.
"Embry?"
And then into the silence there was warmth spreading through her mind. If it had colours or smells Lena would think of warm brown and deep green. The colour of the forest where he had grown up and where he had said one day she was more than welcome to come and see. The smell of him, the warmth that radiated form him. The musky smell of teenage boy mixed with coconut and sea salt and something that reminded her of an aftershave that she couldn't put a name too. Dog hair even. It was him. He was invading her senses along with her invading his mind. That had never happened before. But maybe she was reading too much into this, after all it wasn't like there were many werewolf/half vampire relationships in which to compare too.
Lena stared without seeing in the mirror as she waited. It seemed as if the whole world was waiting on this moment. And then without warning, much like he had done when he had appeared in her life she heard it. It was a combination of surprise and sleep and panic and then something else she couldn't…no she didn't want to name.
It was almost (not quite, not really) like coming home.
"Lena!?"
And yeah, she avoided Italy for a very specific reason. (wink,wink)
And i hope you enjoy this chapter i will endevour to udpate sooner rather than later.
Next Chapter-Rosalie and Emmett attempt to adjust to the absence of Lena in their lives and the Cullens get both news and a rahter large credit card bill-next chapter is entirly the Cullens pov.
