A/N: I could have posted this one a bit sooner but I ended up rewriting it. It was rushed and I wasn't happy. So, what I originally sent to Kim and Starry has now been split into two chapters. I told Kim I'm not going to make her edit it again, but she probably will. She's a royal pain in the puss who takes on too much.
So, momentary change of subject, I watched Sierra Burgess is a Loser, and JFC. Everyone raved about this trash heap because...? An entitled snot of a teenager with obvious insecurities and a martyr complex who catfishes some poor sod, but, but, but...she wrote a song, so it's ok. As if that fucking matters. I tell you, the level of discomofort and cringe almost did me in. What a crap message, too. Hey, if you're not the teenage beauty queen of your school you cannot have love and friendship without being a lying, deceitful little sack of shit. Fuck off.
Anyway, I'll shutup and post.
Black Swan
Chapter 39
I remain on my back, my eyes closed as I struggle to catch my breath. The rushing sound of it reverberates in my ears even as they ring sharply. Together it drowns out the deafening silence of the vampire not six feet from me.
The rain continues to fall steadily against my face and exposed skin, cold and stinging, but strangely soothing, as my hands move slowly to probe against my throat. I'm completely healed, but the psychological pain of his actions remains.
He tried to kill me, and he almost succeeded.
I'm not sure how to comprehend it, but even as past emotions begin to simmer to the surface, and anger overruns me, I'm not even remotely brave enough to face him. He's stronger than I was ever expecting, and I still don't have the same level of control over my shield I once had. It's safer to keep it tightly closed around me.
"...Bella...?" he speaks my name softly in the rich, smoothness of every immortal even as shock bleeds from each syllable. I can hear the rapid tempo of his heart and his own breath in steady but accelerated rhythm, but he doesn't move. "I'm sorry—B-Bella?" His voice breaks and gives way to an anguish that's so palpable it reaches out and clenches around my heart.
In one fluid movement I'm upright, with one knee imbedding into the damp forest floor beside my muddy shoe. I scan the treetops rapidly, preparing to leap into them if I have to, before I cautiously meet his gaze.
He's continuing to stare at me, but gone is all the murderous hostility that up until now dominated his expression. His entire face is engraved with complete stunned disbelief, his black eyes wide and deeply afflicted with a pain so raw and honest I'm almost convinced the immortal who only moments ago attacked me was another vampire altogether.
Apprehensively, he reaches out to me, but in response, I practically convulse in an effort to keep the distance between us, and he quickly withdraws his hand.
"Bella—"
"You almost killed me, you idiot boy!" I burst, the words flying out of my mouth before I can catch them. "How could you—how could you not know me!?"
He blinks, his vacant expression softening, before he swallows thickly. "I—"
"Even if I was just an immortal who looks like me, is that an offense deserving of death? Or, do you always kill whoever you feel like just because you can—?" I stop abruptly, realizing I just described myself; albeit the way I once was. Though, only ever where humans were concerned. I've never attempted to kill another immortal.
His blank confusion remains as his mouth opens and closes in silence, and it's clear he has no idea what to make of me. "...Bella, I—"
"How could you claim to feel me for five years but you can't feel me now?" I demand as my breath shudders and consumes the air in my lungs, forcing me to pause.
"Bella—"
"Remember when you saw yourself strangling me in my mind? You just fulfilled that prophesy, bucko!—and you promised me you'd never do that to me. Do you remember? You promised me, Mr. Chivalry!" I continue to rant, but I'm rambling, unaware that tears are pouring down my cheeks as endlessly as the rain that washes them away. "Jesus Christ, I-I-I—what the hell are you smiling at?"
He's not smiling as much as he's faintly smirking, despite how consumed by anguish his expression remains.
"There she is," he murmurs to himself, and he's crying too, I realize. His tears, like mine, are obscured by the rain while the heartache behind his thirsting eyes is the only evidence of them.
My breath gushes from me as a bewildered utterance passes my lips. I'm beginning to feel just as overrun by emotion as he looks. And then he does something so utterly human Edward; he sucks in his cheeks and it brings me completely undone.
"I love you," I blurt, as a sound that exists somewhere between a laugh and a cry bursts from him and his composure completely crumbles.
In a movement so swift it shouldn't have surprised me nearly as much as it does, he's once more against me. Only this time when I immediately hold him at arm's length—with my palm wedged into his chest like I so often had to do—he doesn't fight me on it.
"I'm so sorry," he appeals to me, staring so beseechingly at me it immediately makes me waver.
But not quite.
My reaction is purely instinctive; shoving him from me I slap him, and the shock that besets his face is almost comical. Almost, but my emotions are beginning to ravage me and I have no hope of holding them back.
"You're sorry," I echo with dry-laced amusement. "You try and kill me and you're sorry..."
"I didn't—"
"I woke up in a coffin, Edward! Then I burned again—"
"You burned again?" he repeats as if it's an impossibility that not only confounds him but horrifies him as equally.
"I burned, and then I found out I'd lost five years and my human boy was no longer a boy but possibly the most powerful vampire ever created. And I had all these voices in my head driving me crazy, and you in my head. You most of all. I saw you in their minds—"
"Wait—Bella, you saw their minds?!"
"Yes, you gave me your telepathy." I do laugh this time, fractured and wholly without humor. "Aro showed me the most horrific things, and Jane... I had to see how much pain you were in, and r-red-eyed... And-and she didn't know where you were..."
"Bella...Jesus, I'm so sorry." He reaches out to me again, tentatively as if he fears I might flee.
I'm not entirely positive I won't, but even as he wraps his hands gently around my upper arms, my tears, unrelenting, continue to brim over and stream down my face. "I read your messages," I whisper, my voice too compromised for volume, "and I had to relearn how to release my shield to show you my mind so you'd know it was me, but you...you attacked me instead..." I'm so overwhelmed I'm unsure which emotion to lead with, and suddenly exhausted, I allow my head to hang forward.
"Bella..." he all but sobs, the pain in his voice still so tangible it's beginning to shred my already frayed heart. "I..." But releasing me, he impulsively pulls me tight against him. "I did see your mind," he explains, pressing what feels like his entire face to the top of my head, "but it was so jumbled and incomplete, I thought...I thought they weren't your real memories. That they were downloaded... Baby, I did to you what he—"
"No you didn't," I interject, my voice muffled behind his damp chest as the rain continues to pour over and between our half-naked bodies. His skin is no longer hot against my own, nor is it cold. It's warm, temperate, his powerful muscles firm behind soft, pliable flesh that's just as supple when wet as mine is.
"I couldn't let myself believe it," he admits softly, moving to speak it against my brow. "I wanted to, Bella. So much, but I couldn't... I couldn't bear knowing someone had your face. If she wasn't you, I would have killed her."
I raise my head, and as his lips drag down my face, I meet them with mine, only briefly. "She was me."
He pulls back enough that I once again see those ebony eyes and the raindrops clinging to his dark lashes. "She was you," he echoes semi beneath his breath before releasing an arm around me to cup his palm to my cheek. "Can you forgive me?" he asks so earnestly this time the smile that breaks across my face is genuine.
"Of course I can."
He smiles faintly in response, but it's too stricken to remain, and I can no longer stand it.
In a single movement, I rise on my knees, wrap my arms around his neck, my fingers tangling into his wet shock of dark auburn hair, and kiss him.
He reacts instantly and beneath the scarcely-sheltered canopy at least a mile from where Alice first saw this vision of us, we kiss repeatedly and clumsily with an impassioned abandonment that was once precarious for us.
The boy in my arms is no longer a human—he's no longer a boy—and I had no idea how emancipating it is to no longer have to worry about losing control of myself and unwittingly killing him.
"You tried to kill me, but I still love you," I break apart long enough to assert, as a breathy chuckle echoes from him.
"I never thought I'd hear you tell me that," he replies half against my lips, "but I love you too."
He has a week's worth of stubble growing on his chin and upper lip, and it trails across my skin in such a way it completely ignites me. My fangs draw, but the urge to bite him like I once had has vanished. My desire right now is something so much more than just the need to feed, and exists on a stratum I have never known.
I press my body flush against his naked chest as his arms tighten around me. Our mouths part and his tepid breath floods me with the taste of rainwater on his lips. Our fangs clash, and Edward breaks to laugh, but behind the soft huskiness is a mountain of pain that he's unable to conceal.
I attempt to pull back, but he doesn't allow me to, and after severing his lips from mine, he connects and reconnects them to every point of my face before he moves to plant them to my neck and shoulders.
"You're beautiful—were you always this beautiful?" His voice is no more than a sigh, rustic and resonant, as he presses his parted mouth back to mine.
My skin, my very flesh, is becoming an active current of primed senses and warmth like I have never felt, but a momentum is beginning to build within Edward, taking him down a very different path. The emotion behind his actions is beginning to control him. I can feel it behind his shortened breath and the words he can't quite get passed his lips; in his hammering, unfettered heart; and in the tense and straining way his muscles flex in response to me, as if he were waging an internal war within himself.
He groans against my lips, and then again, before he pulls back. "Bella, How?—how did this happen?" he asks with an edge of desperation, wedging my face between his palms as he locks his eyes with mine. They're animated with as much confusion as pain as a storm brews within them.
I shake my head in answer to him as well as to collect my thoughts. "I'm not sure. Jane thinks it was the blood you fed me after I was..."
I don't say it. I can't, and at just the mention of it, the torment creasing his brow deepens. His hands slip from my face and he sits kneeling before me with his shoulders slumped. "I-I-I-I think I'm going to lose it," he mumbles, pushing the heel of his palm roughly against his forehead.
"Edward." Sliding my hand to his cheek, I gently raise his face to mine, and it suddenly occurs to me how exhausted he looks. Dark circles sit beneath even darker eyes, and I wonder when he last slept. "I'm so sorry I put you through that. I can't imagine..."
He makes the effort to smile, but doesn't quite pull it off, and without a word spoken, he draws me to him again and buries his entire face against the curve of my shoulder.
My breath stills as fresh tears well in my eyes, but his pain is impacting me in a way I'm not prepared for. It's just as Rose once warned me; a vampire will not only sense but feel every one of their mate's emotions whether they want to or not. Not only am I now fully aware of the enormity of what Edward went through, but it's so unbearable my first instincts are to recoil from it, and I have no words to offer him to even begin to ease it.
"Bella," he mumbles, his broken voice muted behind my skin, "am I dreaming?"
"You're not dreaming," I assure him, closing my eyes and turning to press my nose and lips to his temple. He scent is just as dizzyingly hypnotizing, but it calls to me for a different purpose now.
"It always feels this real, but then I wake up," he adds, as my tears again spill over, and unable to stop them, I give myself fully over to them.
He immediately leans back, his expression smoothing out with alarm. "No more tears, beautiful vampire girl." His hands return to my face, his thumbs futilely wiping it dry as the heavens continue to unleash over us both.
I nod, but in relation to what I have no idea. "D-do you feel it?"
"I feel everything," he answers, returning his lips to my forehead, "but you most of all."
"No," I shake my head, "I mean, do you feel what's in my heart?"
"I've always felt it. It's why I kept forgetting," he explains, as a short, disjointed laugh breaks from me; a sound that's consumed by as much grief as amazement.
"Oh my god. Let's get out of this rain."
His smile briefly breaks to the surface this time, and nodding, he pulls himself effortlessly to his feet, bringing me with him as he does. "Hey." He turns to me, gazing intently down at me, and I wonder whether he was always this tall. Always this beautiful but so completely formidable.
"Yeah?"
"Bella...release your shield." It's a request that fills me with uncertainty, but in immediate understanding, he places his index finger to my lips. "Stop and think slowly, calmly. I promise you, baby, I'll never hurt you again," he vows, grazing his thumb over my cheek bone.
Relenting, I nod, and taking a momentous breath, I release it and allow my shield to fall.
I show him my first memories of him, from that fateful day in Biology, and then again in the Nurse's office, to finding him with Lauren in his car, and the first time I fed on him. I show him how I killed James, seeing him in the tree outside my window drunk and distraught, and then to the night in Rose and Emmett's cabin, and finally to our last days together before that moment in Port Angeles separated us.
I watch his reaction closely, feeling my expression mirror the surprise and eventual heartbreak that reflects in his, before I show him waking up in the darkness in the Volturi crypt, and feeding again, and then Jane and Aro...
At this point his eyes widen and his expression pales with shock. "Bella, you can see as clearly as I can." It's not a question.
I smile faintly and nod in admission. "It's really very annoying."
He almost laughs as if it's entirely too hard to fathom, but in a way it is. The two of us are an exception in a world already immersed with them. "And you gave me your shield."
"Are you going to lower it so I can read your mind?" I ask, raising both my brows expectantly, but I'm not expecting the culpability that suddenly overtakes him.
"N-not yet," he says quietly stammering, his eyes breaking from mine to drop to the forest floor.
I pause, gauging him for a moment. "Edward, you have nothing to be ashamed of."
He nods somberly but keeps his gaze averted from mine. "Just...not yet. Bella, please don't—"
"Edward—"
"Bella," he looks up, a heavy frown suddenly ingraining on his face, "please put it back up," he practically begs me this time, his voice quietly disturbed.
"W-what is it?" I stumble over the words in confusion just as recognition hits me and I abruptly snap my shield back in place around me. What I was thinking; what he just saw… "Oh, god, I'm so sorry."
He does laugh this time, but it's stiff with discomfort. "I almost kill you and you apologize. How did everything get so backwards?" Lowering his gaze again, he runs his hand stiffly back through his wet hair; a mannerism he often did as a human.
"When my human boy became stronger than me," I say lightly, reaching out and grabbing his hand in an effort to break him from all this angst. "No more tears remember? So no pouting. While the whole tortured immortal vibe looks entirely too good on you, I'm really not a fan."
He breaks naturally into a grin, his breath shooting softly through his nose as he does. "There's my vampire girl."
Briefly returning it, I sigh and shake my head. I need time to process and to be alone with him, but not out in the middle of a storm. "Let's get out of here."
He nods slowly and reaches out to wipe a dripping strand of my hair gently behind my ear and off my face. "Do you know somewhere we can go? I'm kinda nomadic at the moment."
"Rose gave me the key to her ca—"
"Not there," he immediately interjects as his face subtly darkens. "Bella... somewhere new."
"Where do you want to go?" I put the question back to him. I'm hyper aware of his pain, and all I can comprehend is taking it from him. I can't let him wallow in it. Emotions for a vampire can be a dangerous thing. They're as heightened as our strength, our senses, and they can consume us whole if we allow them to. And Edward is very close to that point.
He glances off into the distance, his forehead bunching in contemplation. "I know a place," he turns back to me and answers, his voice notably lighter. "Come on."
I take the hand he offers, when he pulls me in his arms. "Just...hang on a sec..." he mumbles against my hair before expelling what sounds like every breath of air in his lungs. He's trembling against me, but then, I can't be sure it's not me.
I close my eyes, my cheek pressed to his chest as I tune my senses to him. Alice once explained to me that Jasper was just as interwoven in her veins as the blood that sustains her. Of course, at the time, I only scoffed at such a notion, but she was right. Edward is now as intrinsic to me as the air I breathe, and above all else it scares me. For a vampire, to love is to be more vulnerable than we will ever experience, and it's a pain Edward has already known.
"Okay, I'm good. I'm good," he cements it a second time more or less to himself, and kissing my brow briefly, he releases me. "Bella..." Uncertainty reflects in his eyes before he appears to shake it from his thoughts. "You okay?"
"Not even remotely," I say ironically. "You need to take good care of me, bucko."
He flashes me that sunny grin of his, but it's different now. Entrenched with it is his growing maturity and the shadow of a pain he'll probably carry with him forever. "I always promised you I would."
"I know you did," I say, my voice falling to a murmur.
He leads me out of the forest at human speed, when without warning, he wraps both hands around my waist and hauls me off the ground and over his head; propping me against his shoulders. He moves so rapidly, I barely have time to suck in my breath in reflex, let alone protest.
"Edward, what—"
"You really are a soft little thing in my arms," he teases me, and angling his head he winks.
He's flipping between tangents from an intensely serious vampire to the innocent human he once was. In fact, he's a strange conjunction of the two worlds he's lived. Despite what he's been through, he's still only five years old, I realize. He's still transitioning.
Chuckling, I tug on his earlobe playfully. "You always knew."
He walks with me on his shoulders, his hands clamped over my thighs, at an almost casual pace. I thread my fingers through his hair. It's longer than it was the last time I saw it; by a couple of inches at least. It's wet, but thick and silky; the color of chestnuts with natural gold and red wine highlights. He always had amazing-colored hair, and after his blood, it was what drew me to him.
When he reaches the lake he breaks into a run, and in less than a dozen seconds we reach the interstate where I abandoned my borrowed black Subaru.
"How did you know?" I ask suspiciously after he hoists me back to the ground beside it.
"I watched you," he confesses with an almost cheeky grin.
"The whole time?"
He nods once, his grin growing exponentially. "The whole time."
"So you lured me into the woods to my death," I state, arching a pointed brow.
"'Fraid so, baby."
Baby... I wonder when that happened, but it's a term of endearment I'm not nearly as opposed to as I imagined I'd be.
"What happened to 'darling'?" I remind him, wrangling my hand into the pocket of my denim shorts for the key, because only a human would do something so utterly cliché as to leave their keys behind the car's sun visor.
"I already told you, darling is something old people say. We're not old." Plucking the key from my hand, he opens the passenger-side door for me.
"Speak for yourself, bucko. I'm ninety," I reply, sliding onto the seat. I'm so wet my body slips against the leather; something Edward apparently finds highly amusing.
He shuts the door and in the next second he's behind the wheel and slotting the key into the ignition. "Not anymore. When did you wake up?" he asks, glancing at me momentarily with a quick grin, before he shifts the car into drive and hits the gas.
"September 1st," I answer, eyeing him dubiously, wondering where he's going with this.
"Then you were only created six weeks ago. Have you seen your eyes? They're bright red. You're a newborn, gorgeous."
I open my mouth to argue, but conceding defeat, I laugh instead. "I guess you're right."
"Besides, darling is what I called you when I thought I lost you. I can't call you that anymore," he adds, after several long seconds of silence as we head back down Interstate Five doing close to 100mph.
I observe him for a moment before placing my hand tenderly to the side of his face. "No, you can't."
"You read my texts." Again it's not a question, I already told him I did, and releasing a hand from the steering wheel he takes mine and brings the back of it to his lips.
"I did," I say in a small voice, watching him carefully. His emotions are as displaced as mine, only significantly more heightened, because he's still learning how to control his vampire nature. Right now he's very clearly at the mercy of it.
He turns to me and offers me a smile that convinces neither of us. "That's in the past now, baby." And seeming to pull himself from the melancholy, he reaches into his front pocket, tugging something free, and after sliding down the driver's side window, he tosses it out.
I catch the distinct sound of it shattering against the road, so whatever it was, it was made of glass. "What was that?"
"My backup plan," he mumbles, his eyes steeled to the road ahead of him, and that's when I understand. He had a vial of werewolf venom.
I don't respond. I can't, because what can I say? Instead, Edward takes my hand, and leaning in over the gears, I lay my head to his shoulder.
He reaches Seattle, a lot quicker than it took me to leave this morning, and heads to the same underground parking lot that leads to Eclipse.
"I need to feed. I'm really hungry," he replies to my quirked brow.
"So...Eclipse?"
"Easier," is all he says, and after finding a park, he's out of the car and opening my door for me before I can blink.
I am definitely not used to this speed of his.
"What are you doing?" I ask filling with quietly amused curiosity as he kneels before me and unties my boots.
"Getting rid of these." Pulling them free and making similar work with the thick navy socks, he tosses them aimlessly to the side, and taking my hand he draws me, now bare-footed, from the car.
That's when I pay closer attention to what he's wearing; bright red chucks beneath black, increasingly worn jeans, and of course, no shirt.
His muscle tone is more refined than when he was as a human, and as the magnetism that exists between us again calls to me, I'm forced to look away.
"Where did you get those?" I motion to his shoes instead.
"I traded a kid in Japan for the Armani crap that Carlisle bought me," he replies, his smirk partially hidden behind his sucked-in cheeks, and walking around the back of the car, he pulls me in the direction of the concealed entrance.
"Edward, I'm all wet," I complain, and the last place I want to be right now is at a vampire bar. I've had enough of these places to last the next millennia.
"So am I, but they won't notice anything other than how beautiful you are," he assures me, glancing briefly down at me with his smirk reappearing, as I practically snort.
"Well, aren't you the smooth-talker," I note cynically, even as I tug on his hand to stop him, but his strength far surpasses mine and he's not even slowing down. "Can't I at least change first?"
"I'm hungry," he reiterates.
"There's close to a million people in this city."
He sighs minutely to himself as if I'm exasperating him, and he's right; how did things get so upside down?
"Alice said you were going to feed in Bellingham," I relay, as we step inside the elevator and Edward punches in the floor to take us several stories below.
"I was, but a certain beautiful newborn vampire distracted me." He winks again, making the smile immediately twitch at my lips.
"You felt me from that far out?"
"Yeah," he answers simply.
"That's why you were early..." I muse to myself.
The elevator doors open with a ping and we enter the dimly-lit sandstone corridor. "I'd never felt you on that magnitude before and I thought to myself it was either you or I was losing my mind."
"It was me," I say wryly.
He opens his mouth to reply, but pauses with a rueful grin. "But then I saw you showing all this skin that my Bella never did, her mind wide open and not making any sense, and well..."
"So your first thought was to kill me," I conclude dryly in an attempt to make light of it.
He has the decency to look sheepish, but it's obvious he's still brooding over it. "I was holding back. At the time I wasn't sure why."
I'm fairly certain my mouth falls open; I'm incredulous. "You-you were holding back?" I stutter. "Please don't attempt to kill me again while using your full strength."
"I...Jesus, Bella..." He huffs in what sounds like frustration. "I'm so sorry I hurt you." He turns his harrowed jet black eyes to mine, his brow heavily knotted over them, but his sentiment is entirely too familiar.
I know intimately myself what it's like to feel so much remorse.
"Alice kind of did foresee it," I mention bitterly, "but naturally, she failed to warn me."
"I..." he glances away and rubs roughly at his forehead, his obvious frustration increasing. "I honestly thought I was hallucinating, but then you opened your mouth, and... I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. Do-do you know what I mean?"
"I do," I reassure him.
"I'll never—"
I nod hastily in an effort to head him off. He's slipping back and I can't allow it. "I know."
He smiles awkwardly but it's still so plagued by guilt, and turning back to the sealed door and placing his thumb to the censor, he punches in the code on the adjacent keypad.
"Edward, have you been here since...?"
"No. I just...remember." He scoffs near beneath his breath. "I remember what was written on the birthday card my grandmother sent me when I was two years old."
The steel doors open and at the end sits Jerome. "Take a shower in the rain?" he mocks us both.
Swiping his hand through his wet hair, Edward flicks the particles of water directly at Jerome's face.
"Amusing, newborn," he says drolly before stepping forward to open the double-doored entrance.
"He's a dick," Edward bends down and says, before his head snaps up on impulse and his eyes fix to the two human females grouped in the far corner of the foyer; both are watching us.
He's hungry and his deepest instincts are sharply tuned to the blood running through their veins, but he's able to resist, and with a lot more ease than he really should have.
The humans still know enough to fear him though, despite their obsessive inner musings over his beauty. Over both our beauty.
"They think you're oh-so pretty," I tease him, as he groans in response.
"They all think that. I really don't like it. I'm not beautiful." He grimaces as though it were an insult while I fight the urge to all out snicker.
"Good to know your pride is still as prevalent, bucko."
"Bucko..." he echoes wistfully, but his amusement is undeniable. "You don't know how much I missed being called that."
A/N: I apologise for the cheese. Sometimes it's unavoidable. Review if you feel like it, otherwise do what you must, and if you liked it a smidge I'm happy.