Each Moment Lost to the Past

Chapter 11

Bella's POV

I dream nearly every night. Sometimes it's the same dream repeated each night after the next, sometimes it's something completely new. Sometimes it's something horrifying and gruesome, but most of the time it's something mundane and nonsensical, like I'm watching the life of an ordinary family go about their day. My dreams have no rhyme or reason most nights- just random snapshots of life that I have no hope of figuring out if what happened or the people in my dreams are real or not. Other times my mind fixates on something, and I'm plagued with related dreams for weeks (like the Battle of the Wilderness).

This is one of the nonsensical dreams that my mind seems to be fixated on- one that has been randomly reappearing for weeks. It's strange, but this one more than others (over kidnappers and bloody wars) seems to leave me feeling disturbed when I wake up.

I stand in the dark room, straining my eyes, but I know there's no point. From all my experiences before, I know that in this room, there is only total darkness. There is no light to even produce a shadow, let alone see a hand in front of my face.

My stomach drops when I open my eyes to this room, at least I think my eyes are open when I appear here. The cold ground beneath my feet is the only sensory grounding me, but without my sight I always feel completely off balance- like I might be balancing blindfolded on the edge of a cliff without realizing. All it would take is an inch forward for me to go spiraling over the edge.

My ears instinctively stretch out to compensate my lack of sight, even already knowing what I'll hear.

"Please," a weak voice whispers, void of life like it doesn't even know why it bothers with the plead anymore. "Please let me out."

I shiver at the complete hopelessness dripping from each syllable.

The other voice answers the plea, strong, confident, yet muffled as if through a door. "Do you still have visions?" It asks, curious in a detached sort of way.

"No, no," the girl murmurs weakly, "I don't dream anymore. You cured me. It's a miracle!" her voice cracks with forced conviction.

This is normally when I'd wake up, feeling haunted- sure that this is a warning to never, ever, talk about my dreams with anyone. Well, anyone except Jacob. Only, this time, the blackness doesn't fade to the surroundings of my bedroom.

There is an unconvinced pause from the other side of the door. "Well," the voice says, "I think we should try just one more treatment to make sure it sticks."

And the door opens.

Light floods into the room suddenly and, after just being in total darkness, I'm blinded. I try squinting through my streaming eyes, desperate to learn whatever happened to this hopeless voice, but all I see are shadowed figures moving.

One enters the room, stooping down beside the blinding light of the open door to pluck a small form up off the ground, tugging them to their feet and towards the man waiting in the doorway.

"Wait, no, I'm better," she says, struggling weakly against the one holding her. "I promise I'm better."

"I believe you, Mary," he says gently, like he's talking to a child, or a particularly dumb animal. "Just one more treatment and then it's all over. Bring her to lab 3."

I desperately follow the group, blinking stars out of my eyes as we make it down a white hallway. Everything is white- the pealing walls, the checkered tiled floor, even the voice's long coat and his companion's clothes. The ceiling is high and beamed, and the fragile hallway windows reveal that this scene I'm witnessing is long past.

They enter a room not far away, and when I follow them in, my feet freeze.

"Please, please," the girl pleads, struggling as the man holding her easily wrestles her into a high-backed chair and starts strapping down her limbs as if he were doing nothing more than tying his shoelaces.

The doctor goes about pushing a large machine closer. I don't go around the back of the chair to see the girl's face- I don't want to see it. I don't want to see this- to have it stuck in my mind. I've scribbled pages and pages of blackness into my sketchbooks. That room haunts me- I don't want to add this girl's face to it.

The doctor attaches wires to the crying girl. "We're going to make you all better, Mary," he tells her as he stuffs something like cotton in her mouth, like he truly believes he's helping her. He turns on the machine.

With a nod to the assistant (or maybe he's a nurse), he flips the switch. The muffled scream that follows will haunt me even in the waking world. It only lasts for seconds, but it's seconds too long. Mary sobs into her gag, and how anyone could do this to a human being, even 'for their own good,' is a mystery to me.

"Increase the voltage," the doctor demands, examining the girl apathetically before noting something down in his stupid notebook. "Again."

I clench my eyes shut, wishing more than anything to just wake up- I don't want to see this. It lasts hours. At least, it feels like it does. I'm only drawn out of the numbness when the doctor suddenly shuts off the machine.

"Mary?" he asks, and all I can think is please, please, please answer. The doctor reaches out, removing the gag from her mouth (to keep her from biting her tongue I realized a while ago). A string of drool follows the cloth as he tosses it onto the nearby table. "Miss Brandon?" he asks again.

"…who?" a horse murmur comes quietly from the girl, just a heartbreakingly confused croak.

The doctor leans forward in interest. "Do you have visions, Mary?"

As I watch her slowly shift in her chair, I want to go around, to see, to make sure she's okay- but she's not. I know she's not. This is a warning of what could happen if I ever tell.

"…I don't…" Mary weakly whispers, shaking her head back and forth slowly against the headrest. "I'm sorry…where… am I?"

The doctor discards his notebook on the table and reaches out to start undoing the restraints. "You are at a hospital, Mary. You were ill, but we are curing you."

"You are?" she asks, helplessly confused.

"I am, and I'm pleased with your progress." He turns to the white shadow after he finishes plucking off the electrodes. "Take her back into the isolation room."

The nurse has to lift the small girl completely into his arms because she is too weak to do more than twitch.

Only then am I tugged back to reality with a squeezing in my chest, blinking anticlimactically into a worried boyish face. I sit up wiping the tears from my cheeks, and Jacob backs up quickly, settling on the edge of my bed.

It takes me a moment, staring sightlessly at the empty sleeping bag across the room, to remember my own life rather than just the darkness. I go through the list of what I know slowly, methodically. My name is Bella Swan; I am sixteen years old; my father is Charlie; my best friend is Jacob Black; I am dating Alice Cullen. Then comes the more complicated things I know. I go to Forks High school; I have dreams that are sometimes real; only Jacob knows about the dreams; it's the first week of February; Jacob and I had a sleep over last night; tomorrow is Monday.

Six weeks ago, I feel asleep at Jacob's, I dreamed, and when I woke up, I was confused. It was only for a minute- I was still stuck in the dream- but it was enough to scare the daylights out of both me and my best friend who was ready to scream for his dad to call an ambulance. It was an all too glaring parallel to waking up on the side of the road in Arizona.

After we both finally calmed down, we came up with this method of organizing my thoughts whenever I wake up. I don't know if it actually does anything, but it does help me to remember that the lives I see aren't real. At least, not currently.

Jacob waits patiently until I look back towards him. "What did you dream?" he asks, voice just a whisper. It's still early in the morning, too early for us to be up, and I already feel the exhaustion tugging at my eyelids.

"The dark room again," I sigh, pressing my palms harshly into my eyes. Jacob immediately moves to flick on my lamp, knowing that I don't much like the dark after this particular dream. "Can you hand me my journal?" I request, and he instantly bends down to grab the box from under my bed.

Since I've told him, we've combed Before Bella's journals cover to cover, looking for any information that we didn't already know. My wall already looks like a replica of her room back in phoenix, covered in newspaper clippings, notes, and drawings. It looks like a lunatic's wall. A paranoid schizophrenic's.

I shiver as I carefully recount the additions to my dream into the journal's pages. Jake reads over my shoulder, but I don't bother hiding it. If he hasn't tossed me into the nut house yet, like Mary's parents probably did to her, this new entry won't do it.

"You're not crazy, B," he murmurs as if reading my thoughts.

"Aren't I?" I laugh a bit hysterically.

"What you see is real, though," he gestures to the wall, just a fraction of the things I've seen- the ones big or gruesome or horrible enough to deserve having an article written about it.

"It would be easier if I was crazy," I sigh, flopping backwards into my pillows. I wonder if Mary was crazy, or she really did have visions. I wonder if she died in that asylum, or if they eventually let her out after frying her mind of everything that made her who she was.

"I'm tired," I whisper to the ceiling. Silence rings around the room, and after the dream I had, I'm thankful for the shadows dancing around on my walls and creeping across my vision. Shadows mean there is light. Jacob shuffles around my peripheral before roughly shoving me over in the bed. I grumble a bit but make room for the tall boy to crawl under the blankets with me.

I don't know if this is something he did a lot with Before Bella as a child, but I don't mind his presence in my bed. I don't feel uncomfortable or odd about it. I even shuffle closer to pillow my head against his shoulder.

"Just sleep a little longer; I'll be right here," he says, gently taking my hand under the blankets.

With another sigh, I close my eyes and let exhaustion drag me back under as I wish, just for the rest of the night, for the dreams to be done with me.

…..

"So, since you and my sister are dating, I figure it's time that I get to know you."

I glance up from my book toward the huge boy towering over me. Several things are odd about this scene. For one, I'd never expect Emmett, who seems more like the dumb jock who has never stepped foot into a library before, to find me in just such a place. For another, it's lunch time- which usually means most of the school is in the cafeteria. Since that first week of school, I've been spending lunch tucked into the far back corner of the library in a desperate attempt to hide from Jessica.

Jessica doesn't seek me out anymore, but I've come to enjoy the isolated quiet rather than the loudness of the entire student body crammed into a room too small to house it.

"We've been dating over a month," I say blinking up at the grinning boy. He takes that as an invitation and sits down on the floor across from me.

"Yes, well, it took me a while to convince Rosalie not to dismantle my truck if I decided to befriend you."

"You afraid of all of your adopted siblings?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Only the females." His grin only grows wider.

"Smart boy," I comment, closing my book and tucking it away when it becomes clear that my girlfriend's brother isn't going anywhere for a while.

"So, have you always been gay, or is my sister just that special?" He asks, crossing his legs to mimic my position.

"Wow, right into the personal stuff, huh?" I wince, before really thinking about the answer to that question. "I honestly can't tell you the answer to that. I have no idea."

"Fair enough," he shrugs. "I've known Alice for years and I never knew she was into chicks. Or anybody for that matter. So, I guess you're the special one."

"I'm not special," I say sharply, impulsively, before I can stop myself. "I mean… I feel special that Alice returns my feelings, but… I'm really not anything special. I'm as ordinary as can be." Somehow, I feel like I'm overdoing it, so I quickly press my lips together before I can stammer on any longer.

Emmett raises an eyebrow, his interest not faded in the slightest. "Somehow I doubt that." For a moment, just a moment, he seems unusually solemn and worried. He doesn't look like the big, goofy, man-child I've come to expect from his easy smiles- but someone beyond his years- someone with far more life experience than I. Then it passes, and his grin is back in place. "Anyway, do you play video games?"

I clear my throat awkwardly, trying to shrug off the discomfort. "Um, I've played a few. Mostly because my best friend makes me-"

"-Excellent!" he cheers. "Next time you come over, you can play with me some. It's so not fair that Pixie Sticks has been hogging you all to herself."

"Well, I am dating her, so it makes sense that she'd hog me. I certainly don't mind," I say wryly.

"Nonsense," he waves me off. "You need more friends. I'll be your friend, and as your friend, you must hang out with me."

"I have friends," I deadpan.

"Just some kid that no one has actually ever seen," he dismisses in an offhand way. As if I made up an imaginary friend.

"Alice has met him! And I have other friends. Like Angela."

"Then why are you eating lunch hidden away in the back corner or this musty library?"

I sputter indignantly but can't deny that he's slightly right. But Jacob is all the friend I need, and if I want to hang out with other people, Embry and Quil are cool too. More friends would just mean more people to split my time between. Still, he is Alice's brother.

"Fine," I sigh. "But I'm doing this because I want to get to know Alice's family better- not because I think I need more friends," I glare at the cheeky boy, daring him to contradict me. He doesn't.

"Of course," he says, even managing to half-way sound like he believes me.

A/N:...Oh man, you guys are going to hate me soon, and I kind of can't wait. No, I definitely can't wait. And with those ominous words, I'm going to leave you to your reviews. Hopefully. If you love me. Or hate me, I guess.

~Silver~